Madame Picasso
Anne Girard
THE MESMERISING AND UNTOLD STORY OF EVA GOUEL, THE UNFORGETTABLE WOMAN WHO STOLE THE HEART OF THE GREATEST ARTIST OF OUR TIMEWhen Eva Gouel moves to Paris from the countryside, she is full of ambition and dreams of stardom. Though young and inexperienced, she manages to find work as a costumier at the famous Moulin Rouge and it is here that she first catches the attention of Pablo Picasso, a rising star in the art world.A brilliant but eccentric artist, Picasso sets his sights on Eva and Eva can’t help but be drawn into his web. But what starts as a torrid affair soon evolves into what will become the first great love of Picasso’s life.With sparkling insight and passion, Madame Picasso introduces us to a dazzling heroine, taking us from the salon of Gertrude Stein to the glamorous Moulin Rouge and inside the studio and heart of one of the most enigmatic and iconic artists of the twentieth century.Discover more at www.AnneGirardAuthor.com
Novelist Anne Girard brings to life the mesmerizing and untold story of Eva Gouel, the unforgettable woman who stole the heart of the greatest artist of our time.
When Eva Gouel moves to Paris from the countryside, she is full of ambition and dreams of stardom. Though young and inexperienced, she manages to find work as a costumer at the famous Moulin Rouge, and it is here that she first catches the attention of Pablo Picasso, a rising star in the art world.
A brilliant but eccentric artist, Picasso sets his sights on Eva, and Eva can’t help but be drawn into his web. But what starts as a torrid affair soon evolves into what will become the first great love of Picasso’s life. With sparkling insight and passion, Madame Picasso introduces us to a dazzling heroine, taking us from the salon of Gertrude Stein to the glamorous Moulin Rouge and inside the studio and heart of one of the most enigmatic and iconic artists of the twentieth century.
Madame Picasso
Anne Girard
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
For Stephen Robert
Contents
Cover (#u1a7b096d-1FFF-11e9-9e03-0cc47a520474)
Back Cover Text (#u1a7b096d-2FFF-11e9-9e03-0cc47a520474)
Title Page (#u1a7b096d-3FFF-11e9-9e03-0cc47a520474)
Dedication (#u1a7b096d-4FFF-11e9-9e03-0cc47a520474)
Part I (#u1a7b096d-6FFF-11e9-9e03-0cc47a520474)
Chapter 1 (#u1a7b096d-7FFF-11e9-9e03-0cc47a520474)
Chapter 2 (#u1a7b096d-8FFF-11e9-9e03-0cc47a520474)
Chapter 3 (#u1a7b096d-9FFF-11e9-9e03-0cc47a520474)
Chapter 4 (#u1a7b096d-10FF-11e9-9e03-0cc47a520474)
Chapter 5 (#u1a7b096d-11FF-11e9-9e03-0cc47a520474)
Chapter 6 (#u1a7b096d-12FF-11e9-9e03-0cc47a520474)
Chapter 7 (#u1a7b096d-13FF-11e9-9e03-0cc47a520474)
Chapter 8 (#u1a7b096d-14FF-11e9-9e03-0cc47a520474)
Part II (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Part III (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Author’s Note (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)
Reader’s Guide (#litres_trial_promo)
Questions for Discussion (#litres_trial_promo)
A Conversation with Anne Girard (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Part I (#)
Ambition, Art, Passion
We knew very well that we were damned,
But hope of love along the way
Made both of us think
Of what the Gypsy did prophesy.
—Guillaume Apollinaire
Chapter 1 (#)
Paris, France, May 1911
Eva dashed around the corner, whirling by the splashing fountain on the place Pigalle at exactly half past two. Intolerably late now, she clutched the front of her blue plaid dress, hiked it up and sprinted the rest of the way down the busy boulevard de Clichy, in the shadow of the looming red windmill of the Moulin Rouge. People turned to gape at the gamine young woman—ruddy cheeks, wide, desperate blue eyes and mahogany hair blowing back and tangling with the ruby-colored ribbon on the straw hat she held fast to her head with her other hand. Her knickers were showing at her knees, but she didn’t care. She would never have another chance like this.
She darted past two glossy horse-drawn carriages vying for space with an electric motorcar, then she turned down the narrow alleyway just between a haberdashery and a patisserie adorned with a crisp pink-and-white awning. Yes, this was the shortcut Sylvette had told her about, but she was slowed by the cobblestones. Too far from the sun to fully dry, the stones were gray and mossy and she nearly slipped twice. Then she splashed through an oily black puddle that sprayed onto her stockings and her black button shoes the moment before she arrived.
“You’re late!” a voice boomed at her as she skittered to a halt, her mind whirling in panic.
The middle-aged wardrobe mistress looming before her was ominously tall, framed by the arch of the backstage door behind her. Madame Léautaud’s bony, spotted hands were on the broad, corseted hips of her coarse velveteen black dress. Her high lace collar entirely covered her throat, lace cuffs obscured her wrists. Beneath a slate-colored chignon, her large facial features and her expression were marked by open disdain.
Eva’s chest was heaving from running, and she could feel her cheeks burn. She had come all the way down the hill from Montmartre and across Pigalle on her own. “Forgive me, madame! Truly, I promise you, I came as quickly as I could!” she sputtered, straining to catch her breath, knowing she looked a fright.
“There can be no simpering excuses here, do you understand? People pay for a show and they expect to see a show, Mademoiselle Humbert. You cannot be the cause of our delay. This is not a particularly good first impression, when there is so much to be seen to just before a performance, I can tell you that much!”
At that precise moment, Eva’s roommate, Sylvette, in her flouncy green costume, and thick black stockings, tumbled out into the alleyway beside her. Her face was made up to resemble a doll, with big black eyelashes and overdrawn cherry-red lips. Her hair, the color of tree bark, was done up expertly into a knot on top of her head.
One of the other girls must have told her of the commotion, because Sylvette was holding an open jar of white face powder as she hastened to Eva’s rescue.
“It won’t happen again, madame,” Sylvette eagerly promised, wrapping a sisterly arm across Eva’s much smaller, slimmer shoulders.
“Fortunately for you, one of the dancers has torn her petticoat and stockings in rehearsal and, like yourself only a few moments ago, our regular seamstress is nowhere to be found or I would send you on your way without another word. Oh, all of you wide-eyed young things come down here thinking your pretty faces will open doors only until you find something better, or you trap a gentleman of means from the audience to sweep you off your feet, and then I am abandoned.”
“I am a hard worker, madame, truly I am, and that will not happen. I have no interest in a man to save me,” Eva replied with all of the eager assurance that a petite country girl with massive blue eyes could summon.
Madame Léautaud, however, did not suffer naïveté, ambition or beauty gladly, and her halfhearted protestation fell flat. Sylvette this morning had warned Eva—she could be out on her delicate backside and returned to their small room at la Ruche (so named because the building was shaped like a beehive) before she could conjure what had hit her if she didn’t convince the woman of her sincerity. Sylvette had worked here for over a year and she herself was only a chorus girl in two numbers, an anonymous background figure—one who never made it anywhere near the bright lights at the front of the stage.
Three dancers in more lavish costumes than the one Sylvette wore came through the door then, drawn by their mistress’s bark. They were anxious to see a fight. In the charged silence, Eva saw each of them look at her appraisingly, their pretty, painted faces full of condescension. One girl put her hands on her hips as she lifted her eyebrows in a mocking fashion. The other two girls whispered to each other. It brought Eva back swiftly to the cruel Vincennes hometown rivals of her youth—girls for whom she had not been good enough, either. They were one of the many reasons she had needed to escape to the city.
For a moment, Eva could not think. Her heart sank.
If she should lose this chance...
She had risked so much just to leave the city outskirts. Most especially, she had risked her family’s disapproval. All she wanted was to make something of her life here in Paris, but so far her ambitions had come to very little. Eva looked away from them as she felt tears pressing hard at the backs of her eyes. She could not risk girls like these seeing her weakness. At the age of twenty-four, she could let no one know that she had yet to fully master her girlish emotions. There was simply too much riding on this one chance, after an unsuccessful year here in Paris, to risk being seen as vulnerable.
“You hope to be a dancer perhaps, like one of them?” Madame Léautaud asked, indicating the other girls with a sharp little nod. “Because it has taken each of them much work and hours of practice to be here, so you would be wasting more of my time, and your own, if that is your intention.”
“I am good with mending lace,” Eva pressed herself to reply without stuttering.
That was true. Her mother had, in fact, fashioned wonderful creations since Eva was a child. Some of them she had brought with her to France from Poland. As a legacy, Madame Gouel had taught her daughter the small, careful stitches that she could always rely upon to help pay the bills once she had married a nice local man and settled into a predictable life. Or so that had been her parents’ hope before their daughter had been lured into Paris just after her twenty-third birthday. This was the first real job opportunity Eva had managed to find, and her money was nearly gone.
Sylvette remained absolutely silent, afraid to endanger her own tenuous standing here by saying a single word more in support. She had given Eva this chance—told her the Moulin Rouge was short a seamstress because, with all of the kicks and pratfalls, the dancers were forever ripping or tearing something. What Eva made of it now in this instant was up to her.
“Very well, I will test you, then,” Madame Léautaud deigned with a little sniff. “But only because I am in dire straits. Come now and mend Aurelie’s petticoat. Make quick work of it, and bring me the evidence of your work while the others are rehearsing.”
“Oui, madame.” Eva nodded. She was so grateful that she suddenly felt overwhelmed, but she steadied herself and forced a smile.
“You really are a tiny thing, like a little nymph, aren’t you? Not altogether unattractive, I must say. What is your name again?” she asked as a casual afterthought based on what Sylvette had told her.
“Marcelle. Marcelle Humbert,” Eva replied, bravely summoning all of her courage to speak the new Parisian name that she hoped would bring her luck.
Since the day she had arrived alone in the city wearing her oversize cloth coat and her black felt hat, and carrying all of her worldly possessions in an old carpetbag, Eva Gouel had been possessed by a steely determination. She fully meant somehow to conquer Paris, in spite of the unrealistic nature of such a lofty goal. Hopefully, this first job would mark the beginning of something wonderful. After all, Eva thought, stranger things had happened.
Madame Léautaud tipped up her chin, edged by a collar of black lace, turned and walked the few steps back toward the open stage door, beckoning Eva to follow. It was then that she caught her first glimpse of the hidden fantasy—the inside of the famous Moulin Rouge.
The walls beyond the door were painted entirely in black, embellished with gold paint, in flourishes and swirling designs. Red velvet draperies hung heavily, flanking the walls, so that from this distance the place had the appearance of a lovely, exotic cave. It was a strange, seductive world into which Eva was so tentatively about to step and, in that moment, her heart raced with as much excitement as fear.
She tried not to look around too conspicuously as she followed. She was ringing her hands behind her back and her heart was pounding. She was not at all certain how she would steady herself enough to guide a thread through a needle.
Behind the stage, it was a dark and shadowy space even though it was mellowed by the light of day. She smelled the odor of spilled liquor and faded perfume. It was actually a little ominous, she thought, but that made it all the more exciting. As more costumed dancers passed her, coming and going toward the stage, she began to recognize them from the posters that were plastered brightly throughout the city. There was la Mariska the ballet mime, Mado Minty the principal dancer and the beautiful comedienne Louise Balthy, who was both Caroline the Tyrolean Doll and la Négresse. There was Romanus the animal trainer, Monsieur Toul with his comic songs and the troupe of Spanish dancers in their short red bolero jackets and black fringed hats.
Eva had never been sure what she would do if she actually ever saw one of these celebrated performers up close, much less met them. The prospect was frightening and yet thrilling at the same time.
What if Madame Léautaud rejected her now that she had come this close? Would she be forced to return to the city outskirts? No, she would not let that happen. She would not go back to Vincennes. But if she stayed in Paris with no job there would be little else for her. Louis’s proposal that they become lovers, and he would therefore take care of her, might become her only option.
Poor Louis. He had been her second friend in Paris. Sylvette had introduced them. Since he was Polish, and her mother was, as well, and they all lived at la Ruche, their friendship had been quickly cemented. The three of them had been inseparable since.
Eva was with Louis earlier that day when she had to sneak away for her interview at the Moulin Rouge. She had made a weak excuse about having forgotten something she needed to do, just before she left him, and dashed around the corner. He was standing there unfastening his portfolio of watercolors outside the door of Vollard’s shop barely hearing her for anxiety over a fortuitous meeting of his own. Ambroise Vollard was the famed art dealer just up the hill on the cobblestoned rue Laffitte and, after months, he had finally agreed to see some of Louis’s work.
Louis, whose real name was Lodwicz, had been studying at the Académie Julian, painting in the evenings and selling cartoons to La Vie Parisienne to pay his rent. The fact that his wonderful Impressionist-style watercolors did not sell, but his cartoons did, was a source of frustration to him.
Louis had loaned Eva money and regularly bought her dinner this past year to help see her through financially. She did not want him as a lover but she did not want to let him down, either. Loyalty meant everything to her.
Now, Eva stood before Madame Léautaud in the dressing room behind the stage as she examined the hem Eva had just mended.
“I can’t even see the stitches or the rip, your work is so fine,” she exclaimed with a mix of admiration and irritated surprise. “You may begin with us this evening. Be back here by six o’clock and not a moment later. And do not be late this time.”
“Merci, madame,” Eva managed to utter in a voice that possessed only a modest hint of confidence. A group of theater technicians and stagehands walked past, chuckling.
“During the show you will stand in the wings. Sylvette will show you where so you will be out of the way. If one of the performers needs a costume repair you shall only have a moment to mend a hem or reattach a button, cuff or collar. You’re not to tarry, do you understand? Our patrons don’t pay good money to see torn costumes, but they don’t like an interruption in the flow of the acts, either.”
Then Madame Léautaud leaned a little nearer. In a low tone, she murmured, “You see, Mademoiselle Balthy, our wonderful comedienne, has put on quite a bit of weight. We can only draw the corset in so tightly, yet she can be relied upon to split her drawers during one of her exaggerated pratfalls.” Madame Léautaud bit back a clever smile and winked.
A moment later, Eva was back in the grimy alleyway, feeling the utter thrill of victory for the first time in her life. As she hurried back to the rue Laffitte to catch up with Louis, she thought the sensation she had felt was a little like flying.
* * *
Eva took the funicular up the hill and dashed as quickly as she could back to Monsieur Vollard’s shop. It had been wonderful to have a Polish confidant in Paris these past months—someone who understood her thoughts and her goals in ways that did not require French words, and she had no wish to endanger that now by abandoning a friend.
Louis was like a brother to her, though she knew he wished it to be more. But they were too alike to be suited for one another. He was reliable and kind, and since she’d been in Paris, Eva needed that far more than romance.
Poor Louis, tall and pale with dust-blue eyes, living in the shadow of Eva’s potent dreams. He still had not lost his thick Polish accent. Nor did he long for the sense of city style as she did. He still carefully waxed the ends of his beige mustache, wore a stodgy top hat when he went out, his favorite single-button cutaway jacket and two-tone ankle boots, which had all been fashionable a decade ago.
Still, it was Louis who had created the name Marcelle for her and she would be forever grateful because Marcelle had clearly brought her luck. Over wine at a small country brasserie, Au Lapin Agile, tucked cozily on a little hill in Montmartre, Louis had playfully proclaimed her to be thoroughly Parisian by giving her a name that sounded entirely French.
She had giggled at the new incarnation, but she had instantly liked it, too. It felt whimsical and freeing to be someone else, and there was such exciting power in that. Marcelle could possess an air about herself that Eva could not. Eva was cautious and meek. Marcelle would be carefree and confident, even a little seductive. She had even mastered the proper singsong city accent and altered her wardrobe with little touches to reflect some of the newer fashions, like calf-length skirts and high-waist belts.
Louis told her that she had a nose like a button, small and turned up at the end. She knew her blue eyes were bold and big, and that her long dark lashes framed them. She was petite and slim and he told her the overall effect was an alluringly innocent quality. But Eva did not feel innocent at all. Inside she was a powder keg of determination just waiting to experience life.
She longed to be a part of the vibrant new age in Paris, the Moulin Rouge and the Folies Bergère. The famous Sarah Bernhardt and Isadora Duncan were both drawing huge crowds at the Trocadéro, and two years earlier, the well-known dance hall performer Colette had kissed another woman so passionately onstage that she had nearly caused a riot. Ah, to have seen that! Paris was positively alive, Eva thought, a place pulsing with brash young artists, writers and dancers, all as eager as she was to make their mark.
Everyone was reading de Maupassant or Rimbaud, for their realistic portraits of life, and also the radical work of two new Parisian poets, Max Jacob and Guillaume Apollinaire. Eva loved Apollinaire’s work best for how daring and edgy it seemed to a conservative girl from the suburbs. A passage from his poem “The Gypsy” long had contained her fantasy of a wild, exciting life in Paris.
We knew very well that we were damned, But hope of love along the way Made both of us think Of what the Gypsy did prophesy.
In spite of the steady uphill climb back to Montmartre, Eva was skipping past the string of little shops along the cobblestoned rue Laffitte, beaming like a child as she arrived at Vollard’s shop. Louis saw her through the street-front window. A little bell tinkled over the door as he opened it and came outside.
“My meeting is already finished—I couldn’t even introduce you as my good-luck charm. You knew what this meeting meant to me. Where the devil did you go?”
“I found myself a proper job! It’s only a seamstress job but it’s a start. I wanted to surprise you.”
All seemed instantly forgiven as he drew her up into his long slim arms, and twirled her around so that her plaid skirt made a bell behind her.
“Oh, I knew you would find something eventually!”
When Louis set her down he drew her to himself and held her tightly against his bony torso.
She sensed him remembering the boundaries of their friendship as he took a single step backward, the color rising in his pale cheeks.
“That’s such wonderful news. And, as it happens, I have a surprise for you, too—now we must celebrate!” He smiled, revealing crooked yellow teeth.
He held up two tickets as his dim smile broadened. “They are for the Salon des Indépendants tomorrow afternoon,” he said proudly.
“How on earth did you manage them? Everyone in Paris wants to go to that!”
The coveted tickets were nearly impossible to find. Eva had always been too poor and too common to partake in much of what Paris had to offer, so it was all just a fantasy, the glamorous life only a fingertip away. Though she wasn’t entirely thrilled with having to spend the afternoon alone with Louis, now she had the chance to attend the famous Salon des Indépendants! It was one of the most important art exhibits every year and all of the young artists in the city vied to have their work exhibited among the paintings of those who were more well established. Anyone who was anyone in Paris would be there.
“My boss at the newspaper got the tickets for his wife. It turns out she finds some of the artists too vulgar for her taste.”
Eva giggled. She would be the absolute envy of Sylvette—and everyone else at the Moulin Rouge. It was simply beyond her to turn down the offer.
They walked along the Parisian lane that snaked its way around the butte de Montmartre, its gray slate roofs and peeling paint welcoming them as a light mist began to fall. Strolling happily, they passed a stall brimming with boxes full of lush, ripe fruit and vegetables. The sweet fragrance mixed with the aroma of freshly baked bread from the boulangerie next door.
Eva glanced up at the Moulin de la Galette beyond, with its pretty windmill. Yes, all the pretty little windmills, and the secret cobblestone alleyways around them, hiding the dance halls and brothels of that seamy neighborhood that shared space with vineyards, gardens and herds of sheep and goats. Up the other way was the place Ravignan, which had become quite famous for the many artists and poets who lived and worked up there at that crumbling old place called the Bateau-Lavoir.
She pushed off a shiver of fascination.
“Shall we pop over to la Maison Rose for a private little celebration before we head home?” he asked. “And afterward, perhaps you’ll allow me a little kiss.”
“We’ve been all through that. You really must give up the idea.” She laughed, making sure her tone was sweet.
“Well, then you shall become my muse, at the very least, if not my lover.” He smiled. Nothing, not even her rejection of his advances, could seem to spoil their two personal victories today. “I need one now that Vollard has actually bought one of my paintings. That is my other big surprise.”
“How wonderful!” she exclaimed. “Then a French muse is fitting. Not a Polish one, at least,” she countered with a happy little smile.
“Tak, pi¸ekna dziewczyno,” he answered her in Polish. Yes, beautiful one. “A French muse. Every good artist needs one of those to inspire him.”
* * *
By night, the Moulin Rouge was a different world than what Eva had seen earlier that day—the glitter of bright lights, the strong smell of perfume and grease paint, the hum of activity. It was thrilling to be even a small part of the backstage enclave.
Trying to keep out of the way as stagehands and actors dashed back and forth past the racks of costumes, Eva stood in the wings with wide-eyed amazement. She was struck by the diverse crowd of performers, everyone chattering, whispering, gossiping, and many of them drinking. To ward off stage fright, they laughingly declared.
Eva noticed that their brightly colored costumes were surprisingly garish. They were certainly cheaply made and sewn. Her mother long ago had taught her to know the difference. Close up, she could see the patches, the repairs, the soiled collars and dirty stockings. It was a disappointment, but she did not let it detract from the absolute thrill she felt at merely being here. It was all so exciting, this vibrant, secret world of performers!
Eva tried to be inconspicuous as she waited for her moment to be called upon. She clasped her hands to keep them from trembling, and her heart was pounding. She recognized all of the performers. Mado Minty breezed past her first, in an emerald taffeta costume with flared hips, cinched waist and a tight bodice. Across the way, near a rack of hats and headdresses, stood the celebrated comedienne Louise Balthy, with her distinctively long face and dark eyes. She was eating a pastry.
As Madame Léautaud had predicted, Eva was called upon several times during the performance to dash in with needle and thread.
Suddenly, she felt someone stumble over her foot.
“Hey, watch what you’re doing! Do you not know who I am?”
Eva jolted at the sharp voice when she realized that it was directed at her. She glanced up from her sewing basket and saw a beautiful woman wearing an elegant costume, rich in detail. She looked just like her posters and Eva would have known her anywhere. This was Mistinguett. She was the current star of the Moulin Rouge.
“I—I’m sorry,” Eva stuttered as the tall, shapely performer glowered down at her.
“Where do they find these people?” The young woman sniffed as she straightened herself and brushed imaginary lint from the velvet bodice of her costume.
“Two minutes, Mistinguett! Two minutes till your next act!” someone called out.
“Sylvette! Where the deuce are you?”
Her harsh tone turned heads and, an instant later, Eva’s roommate dashed forward, clearly mid costume change herself, but bearing a full glass of ruby wine.
“I’m sorry, mademoiselle, I was just in the middle—”
“Sylvette, I don’t give a rat’s tail what you were in the middle of.”
Eva did not move or speak as she watched her roommate reduced to blanch-faced subservience. When the moment passed, she lowered her eyes and, feeling a bit shaken, went back to her needle and thread.
The performance went on, and Eva continued to make costume repairs. A torn sleeve, a popped button. But in the end it was Mistinguett, not Louise Balthy, who split her drawers in a high kick. She stormed off the stage and cast an angry glare at Eva.
“And what are you staring at?”
The sudden question hung accusingly between them. Oh, dear. She hadn’t been staring, had she? Eva could not be certain. Mistinguett glowered at her as a young wardrobe assistant held her hand so she could slip the torn drawers down over her lace-up black shoes.
“Forgive me. I was only waiting,” Eva replied meekly.
“Waiting for what?”
“For your drawers, mademoiselle. So that I can mend them.”
“You? I’ve never seen you here before!”
“I may be new here, mademoiselle, but I am experienced with a needle and thread.”
Mistinguett’s fox-colored eyes widened. “Are you mocking me?”
“No, certainly not, Mademoiselle Mistinguett.”
Eva could feel the heavy weight of stares from some of the other performers, in their many varied costumes and headpieces, as they passed by her. They knew better than to stop, however, when the temperamental star was angry.
“Well, see that you don’t!”
Mistinguett pivoted away sharply. “Do be quick about it. I have my big number in the second half.”
Eva thought, for just a moment, that she should sew the drawers loosely so that Mistinguett would split them a second time in the same evening. But she quickly decided against the clever tactic. She needed this chance too desperately. For now, a reprisal would have to wait.
Once the crisis had been averted, Mistinguett went off with a tall young man with thick, thick blond hair that was slicked back from his face in a wave. “Who is that?” Eva asked Sylvette as she waited to go on for her second number.
“His name is Maurice Chevalier. He dances the tango with her late in the second half. But talent certainly isn’t how he got the job.” She winked and Eva bit back a smile.
There was so much happening in this glorious place. So many acts, so many personalities and so many names to memorize. For the moment, Eva was holding her own. All of the sewing mishaps had been seen to for the moment.
As the performers filed backstage to relax during intermission, Eva dared to steal a peek around the heavy velvet stage curtain.
Her heart quickened to see such a huge audience crowded into the theater. She looked over a sea of silk top hats, stiff bowlers and fedoras. There wasn’t an empty seat in the place.
As Eva scanned the well-dressed crowd, her gaze was drawn to a group of dark-haired young men, exotic looking and dressed in varying shades of black and gray. They were seated prominently at the table nearest the stage. The tabletop was littered with wine and whiskey bottles and a collection of glasses, and she could hear from their animated conversation that the group was Spanish. They slouched in their chairs, periodically whispering, drinking heavily and trying, like errant boys, to behave themselves until the show resumed. There was a heated air of something tempestuous about them.
But one stood out boldly from the others. He was a powerful presence, with his long, messy crow-black hair hanging into large eyes that were black and piercing. He was tightly built with broad shoulders, and he wore wrinkled beige trousers and a rumpled white shirt with the sleeves rolled past his elbows, revealing his tan, muscular arms. His jacket was slung over the back of his chair. He was incredibly attractive.
Surely the man was someone important since he was sitting at the front of the dance hall. As she turned away from the curtain, Eva thought how interesting it was that there was no beautiful woman beside him. A man who possessed such a powerfully sensual aura, and such penetrating eyes, must have a wife. A mistress, at least.
She almost asked Sylvette if she knew his name, but then suddenly the orchestra music flared for the second half of the show, and she heard Madame Léautaud shouting for her. Fanciful thoughts would have to wait since there was work to do, and Eva was determined to make a success of this job.
Chapter 2 (#)
He stood barefoot and shirtless before the easel wearing only beige, paint-splashed trousers rolled up over his ankles and holding a paintbrush in one hand. Morning light streamed into the soaring artist’s studio in the ramshackle Bateau-Lavoir. There was an easel planted in front of a window that overlooked a sloping vineyard where sheep grazed. Beyond it lay a sweeping vista dotted with the slate-gray rooftops and chimneys of the city.
In the humble space, the cold tile floors were littered with rags and jars of paint and brushes. The plaster walls were papered with art. Here, Pablo Picasso was free to be much more than a painter. Here he was like a great Spanish matador, the wet canvas like a bull to be finessed into submission.
The act of painting was all about seduction and submission.
Finally now when the private thoughts were put aside, the canvas yielded at last. Once he knew he had won control, Picasso was humbled before his opponent. It opened to him like a lover, took hold of him—possessed him as a sensual woman would. The comparisons always mixed freely in his mind. The work after the surrender, once his challenger, became his most exotic mistress.
Paint stained his fingers, his trousers, the inky dark coils of chest hair, his hands and his feet. There was a streak of crimson slashed across his cheek, and another across a swath of his long black hair.
It was quiet in his studio at this early hour and there was a hazy stillness around him. Picasso savored moments like these. He gazed at the wet canvas, the cubes and lines speaking to him like poetry. And yet the quiet brought thoughts of other things, too.
Fernande had drunk too much again last night after their quarrel, so he had gone off to the Moulin Rouge, taking solace in the predictable company of his Spanish friends. Feeling increasingly celebrated here in Paris eased a little of his disquiet. But he knew that when the night was over, Fernande would be at home in their new apartment, and last night he was still too angry to return to her. So he had come to his studio.
He loved Fernande. He did not doubt that. She’d had a difficult life before him, married to an abusive husband from whom she had escaped, and who she was still too afraid, even now, to divorce, and Picasso always had an overwhelming need to protect her because of it. They had been together through the hungry years, living the life of an unknown and struggling artist in Paris, which had strengthened their bond in spite of their ongoing inability to marry.
Yet lately he had begun to question whether that was enough; and his ambivalence about their relationship was extending to other things in his life. In the increasingly looming shadow of his thirtieth birthday, he felt deeply that something was missing. Perhaps it was only that he felt this concerned him.
Picasso picked up a smaller paintbrush and plunged it into a pot of yellow paint. Beyond the smudged windows, the sun was shining. He focused for a moment on the grazing sheep that made the little corner of Montmartre seem like countryside. He thought suddenly of Barcelona, where his mother remained, worrying about him every day.
Thoughts of family, and the simplicity of childhood wound themselves like thread in his mind. He thought of his little sister Conchita, with her wide blue eyes and precious innocence. Even after all these years, Picasso missed her so dearly, but forcefully he pressed the memory away and urged himself to think of something else. He could not change what had happened. All it ever did was bring him pain laced heavily with guilt.
The sound of someone knocking sent the memories skittering into the back of his mind. The door opened and two young men staggered inside. They were his good friends Guillaume Apollinare and Max Jacob. They were laughing, their arms draped fraternally around each other, and they carried the strong scent of alcohol.
“So much for Pablo’s promises,” Apollinaire slurred, and his flamboyant gesture filled the room. “You said you would meet us at Au Lapin Agile last night right after the Moulin Rouge show.”
“I say a lot of things, amigos,” he grumbled, and returned to his painting. But as annoyed as he was by the interruption, he was relieved that it was his friends who had come and not Fernande.
Picasso loved these two misfit poets as if they were his own brothers. They stimulated his interest in ideas, in poetry, in thought—and that encouraged him always with his art. They talked together, drank, argued wildly and had built a deep trust that Picasso greatly valued now that he was beginning to find the first hint of real fame. He was not always certain any longer who he could depend upon to like him for himself. But Max Jacob and Guillaume Apollinaire were beyond reproach.
Max, the smaller of the two men, was the trim, well-read and exceedingly witty son of a Quimper tailor. He had been Picasso’s first friend in Paris. That winter, ten years ago, Picasso was so destitute that he had been reduced to burning his own paintings as firewood just to keep warm. Max had given him a place to sleep, the two of them taking turns in a single bed in eight-hour shifts. Max slept at night while Picasso worked, and Picasso slept during the day. Max had little but he always shared with Picasso what he had.
It was generally assumed that Max led Apollinaire in their flights of fancy, but that was no longer true. Max’s addictions to opium and ether set him at a disadvantage to the charming and clever Guillaume Apollinaire, who now ruled their social engagements.
“Where’s your whiskey?” Max slurred.
“Haven’t got any,” Picasso grunted in reply.
“Fernande drank it all?” Apollinaire asked.
“As a matter of fact, she did.”
“Oh, bollocks, that’s a lie. She rarely comes slumming up here anymore now that you’ve gotten her that elegant place on the boulevard de Clichy, and we know it,” Max countered.
“Well, she came yesterday. We fought, so she drank the whiskey because I had no wine,” Picasso replied in French, but with a voice thickly laced with the melody of his Andalusian roots. Everyone always told him that his French was a dreadful mess of improper verbs and tenses and he knew it, but so early in the morning like this, he didn’t care.
“Ah,” Apollinaire said blandly, dabbing a single long finger at the canvas to check for wet paint. He did not always believe Picasso’s stories. “That does explain a multitude of things.”
“Well, whatever she’s done, you will forgive her. You always do,” Max said.
Pablo felt the squeeze of anxiety make a hard knot in his chest. It was all starting to feel like an inescapable cycle. Best just to work and not to think. Of her, of the futility, of the wild restlessness that was invading his heart more strongly every day. He must bury it just as he did his thoughts of his sister, and how she’d died.
Max looked around the studio, taking stock of the new canvases. Then he paused at the two rough-hewn Iberian stone heads sitting just behind the little drapery that hid his single bed. “You still have these?”
“Why wouldn’t I have them? They were a gift,” Picasso snapped of the antiquarian busts he used in the studies for several pieces of his work.
“A peculiar gift, I always thought. They always looked to me like something from a museum,” Max dryly observed. He ran a finger over the throat of one bust and touched the head of the other. “Where on earth does one find something like these? Legally, that is,” he asked.
Apollinaire replied. “How would I know? I got them from my secretary who was trying to bribe me to introduce him around Paris. Apparently, he thought they would impress me. I gave two of them to Pablo. Simple as that. It has never been my habit to question where gifts come from.”
“Or where the women come from,” Max quipped with a smirk and a clever flourish. “And yet, they do come to our dear Picasso—and both rather generously.”
“Are the two of you quite finished?” Picasso growled as a stubborn black lock of hair fell into his eyes.
“What, pray tell, is this meant to be?” Apollinaire asked, changing the subject. He was looking at the wet canvas on Picasso’s easel.
Picasso rolled his eyes. “Why must art always be something?” he snapped.
“That circle there reminds me of a cello,” Max said playfully. He was rubbing his neatly bearded chin between his thumb and forefinger as he and Apollinaire looked at the painting and then exchanged a glance.
“It reminds me more aptly of a lady’s derrière,” Apollinaire offered with a devilish little smirk.
“Not that you have actually ever seen one, Apo, my good man,” Max quipped, using the endearing nickname they all had adopted for him.
“Well, you most certainly haven’t.”
“Do you not feel things when you look at the painting, or do you only see with your eyes?” Picasso asked, annoyed that they had disturbed him at this sacred hour, and irritated that now they were poking fun at his work. “Dios mío, sometimes I feel as if I am surrounded by a gang of idiots!”
“What I feel is confused.” Apollinaire chuckled, pretending to further inspect the canvas. “Pablo, your mind is a mystery.”
“I feel thirsty just talking about it. Shall we all go find a drink?” Max asked.
“It’s not even noon,” Picasso snapped.
“Morning is always a fine time for a beer. It will set your day to rights,” Apollinaire answered as he loomed over the two of them like a lovable, slump-shouldered giant.
“You two go ahead. I’m going to work a while longer, then I am going to take a nap.” Picasso nodded toward the little iron-frame bed in the corner of the studio. It was covered with a fringed apple-green quilt embroidered with red roses that has mother had sent from Spain. He pressed his hair back from his eyes.
“Sleep here?” Max asked with a note of surprise, since Picasso was well beyond his hungry years in Montmartre. There was no reason for him to spend more time up here in this frigid tumbledown place than was absolutely necessary. “Will that not make things worse at home with La Belle Fernande?”
“Fernande and I will be fine. We always are,” Picasso assured his friends as he picked up a paintbrush and turned away from them. “Go on ahead. I will see you both Saturday evening at Gertrude’s, as usual,” he assured them as he began to stir a pot of paint.
He looked forward to Gertrude Stein’s Saturday evening salon. He craved the young minds there, and his intellectual arguments with Gertrude herself, who was always up for a debate. She challenged him. She made him think, and she questioned every single societal rule there was to question. That woman was a force of nature! If only he was attracted to her physically.
“Now let me get back to work.”
“Aren’t you forgetting? You promised to go to Apo’s reading at the Salon des Indépendants tomorrow,” Max reminded Picasso in a whisper as they arrived at the door.
“I haven’t fogotten,” Picasso said.
But he had forgotten entirely.
* * *
For a moment, with her eyes still closed, and the fog of sleep just beginning to leave her, Fernande had a vision of her husband, the man who had beaten her. She opened her eyes in a panic, but all she saw was a little toffee-colored capuchin monkey dressed in a smart red jacket with a necktie sewn to the lapel. The creature was peering at her with beady black eyes as Pablo stood behind him, smiling.
“The monkey from the café?” Fernande asked, trying to make sense of the little thing perched on her chest, busily cleaning himself. The moment seemed absurd, especially with the fringes of such an awful dream still playing at the edges of her mind.
“I bought him on the way home from the studio this morning. Granted, he is unique but he is better here with us and our little menagerie than how he was being treated.”
Fernande glanced around at their shaggy dog, Frika, a huge shepherd mix, Bijou the Siamese and a white mouse they kept in a wooden cage near the window. Yes, it was becoming a menagerie indeed.
She sat up and the bedcovers fell away from her bare chest. Her long auburn hair tumbled down over her shoulders highlighting her green eyes. The animal leaped from her lap and up onto the dresser, then onto the floor, in skittish bursts of movement. “But a monkey, Pablo?”
He sank onto the edge of the bed beside her. “He was being abused and neglected. You know me, I could not resist rescuing him. I didn’t have enough money with me so I made a sketch for the organ grinder. He seemed quite happy to make the trade.”
The apartment was now flooded with bright morning sunlight and Fernande looked around at all the rescue animals Picasso had always insisted on taking in. “Besides, it is an investment,” he continued. “I can use him in some of my new studies. Monkeys have been symbolic in art back to the Middle Ages, so he might actually prove useful.”
“When he is not soiling our floors or our furniture.”
Fernande sighed as she watched the little creature leave a puddle on the carpet, then scramble across a bureau. Picasso pulled a piece of a croissant from his jacket pocket to give to it. Bijou and Frika lay together on the rug, watching the encounter with bland acceptance.
Fernande sighed and finally got out of bed to dress. She loved Pablo’s tender nature most of all. Perhaps one day, if she loved him enough, God would bless them with a real child. She knew he wanted a family most of all, just like the one he had as a boy in Barcelona.
As she drew on her chemise and buttoned her blouse over it, she saw his eyes narrow. Peeking out from behind her pillow, he had found the pencil sketch she had posed for yesterday while he was in Montmartre. She knew how Picasso felt about her modeling for other artists but she had done it, anyway. The days were long here in this lovely apartment, and he was not the only one who deserved fame. His success kept getting the better of her.
“What is this?”
“You know what it is.”
She knew he immediately recognized the style. “You posed for van Dongen?”
“Pablo, be reasonable. You are gone for hours at a time most days, and Kees is one of our friends from the old days. We know his wife and little daughter, for God’s sake.”
“He’s still a man and you posed for him with your clothes off.” He stalked across the room toward her as she buttoned up her long black skirt. Picasso took her wrists and pulled her forcefully against his chest, stopping her. There was desperation in the movement. “Have I not given you everything you have ever asked for? This apartment, elegant clothes, a wardrobe full of hats, gloves and shoes, and an entrée into any restaurant in Paris you like so that you don’t have to do that demeaning work any longer?”
“It’s not work to me, it’s freedom.”
A silence fell between them, and Fernande turned her lower lip out in a little mock pout and her green eyes grew wide. “Does this mean we are fighting again today, too?” she asked.
“It’s a disagreement. Only that.”
“We quarrel too much, I fear.”
He pressed a kiss onto her cheek and released her wrists. His hands snaked around her then and moved down to the small of her back, drawing her close against him. He was so good at seduction, Fernande thought, and she tried not to think again of the blinding number of women on whom he had honed his skills. She was good at manipulation, but they both knew he was better.
He tipped her chin up with his thumb so that she could not look away from his eyes. “Yet, we always reconcile, which is the enjoyable part,” he said.
It was difficult to feel angry about how forceful Picasso could be when her desire for him had already claimed her. She wanted to be right back in that big warm bed with him, even if there was an element of predictability to their relationship now. After all, they loved each other, and at the end of the day that was enough for her. It had always been enough for him, too.
“I want you to tell van Dongen you can’t pose for the painting.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“It is not a question of trust.”
Fernande could hear the sudden edge in his voice, and she wondered how much he knew of what she did during the long hours when he was up in Montmartre working. “Of course it is.”
“I will not say I am sorry for trying to protect you all of these years, after what your husband did to you. You deserved much better than that.”
She thought of saying that she did not deserve to be so high on the pedestal upon which he had placed her five years ago. But she could not bring herself to because some part of her still craved his adoration. Instead, she pressed a hand to his chest, knowing the curves of him so well, knowing what would make his body respond. It surprised her when he gently brushed her hand aside and turned to look at the little monkey, who had perched on top of the dog’s large, shaggy back. Watching Picasso, Fernande’s heart felt heavy all of a sudden. She was not certain why.
“Let’s go across the street to L’Ermitage for lunch. Just the two of us, hmm?” she asked, trying to sound kittenish. She felt a strange new barrier between them and she did not like it.
“All right. But don’t give me a hard time when I want to bring the leftovers back for Frika.”
“Sometimes I think you love that dog more than you love me.”
“Dios mío, Fernande, I am still here, aren’t I?”
Chapter 3 (#)
“I can’t do it! I won’t!”
She heard her own voice first, when she remembered what had happened the last time before she left home, and the memory of the scene was quickly vivid again in her mind.
Eva’s parents did not react to her protest. Her mother stood silently at the stove stirring the iron pot full of beet soup. Her father sat across from her at the small kitchen table, his elbows heavy on the table and his meaty hand clenched around a half-full mug of wine. He was always so irritable when he drank that sour-smelling cheap wine but no one dared to tell him.
“Kochany Tata,” Eva pressed, hoping that the tender term of endearment would soften him. Yet she knew there was a note of something more harsh in her voice that she could not contain. It was something he would hear because he knew her so well.
The scent of pork, ginger and sour wine was bitingly strong with the tension.
“And what is wrong with Monsieur Fix?” her father asked. He was hunched over and looking up from his glass with glazed, heavy-lidded eyes, as though life itself had gotten as burdensome for him as it had for her mother. He was not yet forty. “You’re too good for the man, are you?”
“I don’t love him, Tata.”
“Opf, love!” he grumbled, batting a hand in the air. “It has all been settled with his family. A girl like you should have a husband, a house full of children and a secure life here near your parents.”
She cringed as though he had pronounced a death sentence on her. A girl like you. What he meant was a plain sprite of a girl, still unmarried at the age of twenty-three, still untested by men, relationships and the world. How she should respond so as not to ignite his anger, Eva did not know because she was not desperate for marriage. The only desperation she felt was to make something of her life. Her mother continued stirring the soup.
“I won’t marry him, even if he is the only man in the world who ever wants me.”
“You will.”
“You don’t understand me, Papa! That life would kill me, I know it would!”
“He is the first serious offer you’ve had. By God, you will marry him.”
“I’m a grown woman! You ask too much.”
“You will always be my child, Eva Céleste Gouel—you do as you are told, and there is nothing more to understand,” her mother declared, finally breaking her silence as she tossed down the wooden spoon and it clattered onto the tile floor.
“No! I tell you, I won’t!”
Suddenly her father slapped her and the force of the blow to her cheek turned her head. She felt the sting of surprise, since her father had never in her life struck her before. Her parents loved her. They had always loved her. As she turned slowly back to face her father, she tasted the trickle of blood from a crack in her lip. “You are our daughter, you owe us for that, and by God in His heaven, you will be Monsieur Fix’s wife, if it kills you!”
Finally her mother spoke. There were tears shining in her eyes. “Eva, please. He is stable enough not to abandon you if you fall ill again. That pneumonia last winter nearly took you. You have always had a weak constitution, your lungs especially. Something bad will happen to you if you go off where we cannot protect you. Something awful, I know it!”
“Eva? Are you listening to me?”
The memory still had the power to claim her. It slipped like a phantom back into the corner of her mind as she gradually heard Sylvette’s voice again. The room they shared was dark so Sylvette could not see the tears in her eyes. The sound of crickets flooded the room through the open window as she realized Sylvette had been telling her a story she had not heard.
“Were you thinking again about what happened with your parents?” Sylvette carefully asked.
“It’s just a vivid memory that comes to me at nighttime, that’s all. I’m fine.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“That won’t help.” She felt the tears fall and then dry on her cheeks. She did not bother to wipe them away. There was a quiet stillness between them after that for a time.
The small room they shared was lit by a moonbeam. Both girls lay on their backs looking up at the ceiling, and Eva could hear Sylvette’s rhythmic breathing. It was soothing, she thought, and the assurance of it calmed her. She looked across the little wooden dresser with porcelain knobs that separated their two beds. A moment later, Sylvette tried to lighten the mood between them.
“Did you see Mistinguett’s face when you said that you were going to mend her drawers?” Sylvette asked, beginning to chuckle. The sound reminded Eva of the tinkle of bells.
Eva felt herself smile and then they both laughed.
“She hates me.” Eva groaned.
“She hates all women who are a threat to her.”
“I’m not at all beautiful, or talented like her, so I should be no threat.”
“But you do have a certain quality. People can feel it. And men look at you differently than they do a woman like her. You are sweet and innocent. They want to protect you.”
“I’m not so innocent. Certainly not all that sweet.”
Sylvette giggled. “Oh, believe me, yes, you are!”
Images of how she had left home crept back into her mind. Her defiance with her family haunted her. A week after the argument with her parents, Eva had summoned the courage to buy a Métro ticket to Paris, and she did not even tell her parents she was going. She was too terrified that they would change her mind.
Her parents were not terrible people. She knew her mother had struggled to find a way out of the poverty she had known in Warsaw, and she dreamed of marrying and having a child in the peaceful suburbs of France. But Eva did not share the same dream. Eva had dried her tears as she’d stepped onto the Métro car in her only pair of button shoes. She knew how badly she was hurting her parents, but she had craved excitement. And the powerful hope for something more than she could find at home.
“Sylvette?”
“Hmm?”
“What happened to the seamstress before me?”
“Mistinguett didn’t like her,” Sylvette answered after another small silence.
“She is so awfully intimidating.”
“I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but it might make you feel better. Mistinguett’s real name is Jeanne, but no one dares to call her that.”
“Why not?”
“Because her own mother was a seamstress. I think she wants to distance herself from her past, as you do. Throwing her weight around helps her do that. It is her one weakness, I think, that those days still can wound her and she flares up in defense.”
“Sylvette?”
“Hmm?”
“Thank you for helping me get the job,” Eva said, feeding the next little silence.
“It was nothing. I only told you about the opening. You got the job all on your own,” Sylvette replied with a yawn. “Besides, you will be able to repay me one day. I feel certain of it.”
* * *
The next afternoon, Eva and Louis made their way together along the busy quai d’Orsay beneath a wonderfully warming spring sun. Everyone in Paris seemed to be out enjoying the lovely weather—parasols open, wide-brimmed hats, their plumes fluttering in the breeze. The sidewalks were ornamented by shabby little bookstalls filled with ragged leather-bound treasures. Brightly painted boats bobbed on the shimmering Seine beyond.
This was her favorite part of the city, and today, with the sunlight playing through the Tour Eiffel and the Parisian rooftops on the horizon, it all looked positively magical.
Ah, how she loved the vibrance of this city!
Next, they cut through the shaded luxury of the Luxembourg Gardens, with its broad sun-dappled walkways, manicured lawns, Grecian urns and magnificent fountains luring them beneath its lush bower of trees. Young bourgeois couples strolled hand in hand casually with them past the Medici Fountain, the ladies twirling their parasols, the men in high cravats and bowler hats or crisp boaters, and fashionable walking sticks. Other couples sat on green park benches scattered along the walkways, some of them feeding the pigeons.
As they walked, they spoke of the latest news. Everyone was talking about what the newspapers called the World’s Largest Ocean Liner, being nearly completed across the channel in Ireland. They were going to call it the Titanic, excitedly heralding it unsinkable.
Now that seemed a sure way to tempt fate, Louis said. The prospect of going all the way from England to America on her maiden voyage seemed absolutely terrifying. Yet, was life not really all about doing the things that frightened one the most?
The greater the risk, the greater the reward. Ironically, it was her father who had always said that. “Would you take a voyage if you had the fare?”
“Not in a million years.” Louis laughed. “I despise the ocean. It’s too big and black and unknown!”
“It’s the unknown in life that’s the best part,” Eva countered with a broad smile.
She was happy finally to merge then with the large crowd moving past the Grand Palais on the broad avenue Nicholas II, and up the dignified staircase into the great white stone Petit Palais, where the exhibition was being held. She could put her concern about Louis’s intentions aside for a while and allow herself to be excited about the artwork everyone was talking about. She tipped up her chin proudly as he handed the two tickets to the man at the entrance.
The building itself was magnificent, and inside there were massive murals covering the walls along with a soaring stained-glass rotunda. There were different rooms all dedicated to various styles of art, and Eva and Louis made their way steadily through the crowd into one of them. Eva noticed that the men and women were holding their gloved hands to their mouths. She quickly realized why and giggled with embarrassment. She had wandered into a room celebrating the work of Henri Matisse.
Eva’s senses were bombarded by bold color, crude styles and raw designs she could not have imagined. She had no idea what she was meant to think or feel about any of it, but some of it was shocking since his work lacked all convention. Several people openly laughed and pointed at a portrait called Woman with a Hat. Eva thought the work was a torrent of confusion with boldly colored brushstrokes slapped onto the canvas as if by a bricklayer’s trowel. It seemed wild and forbidden.
She was fascinated by the naked women in the other paintings around it—the bodies, the great sensual gobs of oil paint on canvas. Eva needed to catch her breath.
“This is the sort of thing artists are doing?” she asked, feeling her body stir as she gazed up at bare breasts, legs and torsos seemingly on every other canvas.
“This was the style a few years ago. They do this and much more that they would not dare to display here. Much of it far more blatantly erotic even than all of these nudes.” Louis sniffed reprovingly.
“You’ve seen worse?” she asked.
“Of course. But now that drivel they call Cubism is the new thing, leaving all this flesh to a retrospective collection in favor of something even more wild. Come, you’ll want to see it. It’s in the next room.” He took her hand and led her through the crowd. He was so stodgy, and his description was the perfect example of that. She hated his moist hand almost as much as how predictable he always was. But even that could not dampen the thrill of this moment. Being here, amid this elite crowd at such a glamorous exhibition, was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her, and her heart was soaring.
“Last year a Parisian donkey made a painting with its tail and they showed it at the exhibition here. That trash sold for four hundred francs, and an artist like me can barely make a decent sale,” Louis droned, doing his best to assert his knowledge and dampen the thrill she felt.
As they made their way to the next room, Eva wasn’t certain what she had expected to see but the new sensory barrage stunned her even more. The vast room, with its colored play of light and all of the people, suddenly made the space seem extremely warm. There were so many huge canvases covered with lines and angles. All of them seemed like sharp pallid cubes with human beings trapped inside trying to escape. Eva felt a shiver at the evocative paintings as she wondered what some of the artists might have been trying to say. There were too many people milling around her to pause long enough to hazard even a guess, but each one was oddly stirring to her.
“These are the damned artists who should be called the Wild Beasts, not the Fauvists. There’s not a thing artistically sacred to any of them. Just look at all of the nonsensical shapes,” Louis grumbled.
“One of them is actually making something of a name for himself at it, although apparently now he’s too much better than everyone else to exhibit his work here. Some Spaniard called Picasso. Wretched Spaniards.”
He rubbed his chin as he looked up at a huge canvas of gray and beige cubes. “I’d like to meet him, though. Maybe some of that dumb Spanish luck of his would rub off on me. At least I know I can paint better than a donkey’s tail!”
She’d heard the name Picasso, of course. Everyone who was anyone in Paris was talking about him, saying he was a true renegade. She had read recently that he had become known for leaving the style of Matisse, and for embracing this new linear style Louis despised. Eva knew nothing about art, but she knew that these paintings fascinated her.
When Louis was distracted and began speaking to a couple he seemed to know, Eva wandered alone back into the first room and to a corner adorned by a large canvas depicting a nude, recumbent woman. She leaned nearer. Henri Matisse, Blue Nude. There was no disguising how erotic it was. Beside it, a few feet away, The Joy of Living, also signed by Matisse. On that canvas there were naked people lounging everywhere painted in vibrant tones of yellow, red, pink and blue. One couple was even depicted... Oh, dear! Eva tried her best not to gasp.
It was at that moment that she saw him.
He gazed up at the vast canvas on the wall before him. He was a rough-looking sort. Like a hoodlum, she thought, a true shabby bohemian. He looked dangerous in his sensuality, not neat and proper like Louis. He wore a casual black corduroy jacket, black turtleneck sweater, wrinkled beige trousers, a slouchy blue cap and scuffed shoes. His thick fingers were stained with paint. He was tightly built and stocky, like a prizefighter.
And then she remembered.
It was the man from the Moulin Rouge last night. There was no mistaking those eyes; they were black as midnight and looked as though they could burn right through the painting. There was a brooding sensuality about him and she felt her body stir. He was looking at the same Matisse canvas, full of lounging nudes. To her horror, he turned sharply and caught her staring at him.
Eva’s heart vaulted into her throat, and suddenly she felt foolish. Then, as if they were the only two people in the room, his lips turned up just slightly in a casual smile and he nodded in acknowledgment of her.
Time lengthened as the energy between them flared. Her imagination betrayed her and as they assessed one another, Eva thought she could almost feel his hands running down the length of her back, drawing her against him. As she watched his gaze travel downward, she knew his thoughts were mirroring hers. His eyes were angling from her neck down along her torso with the skilled appreciation of a lover. Thankfully, no one in the crowded room seemed to notice how they had captivated one another, and Louis was still back in the room with the Cubist works.
Eva bravely returned his smile. She felt so brazen! She knew well enough that she was not a grand beauty—not like the dancers at the Moulin Rouge—but this stranger looked at her with desire.
“Curious art,” he casually remarked of the piece they both were observing. He spoke with an accent so thick that at first she wasn’t certain what he had said.
“I don’t understand it.”
“Do you suppose the artist does?”
“Well, Monsieur Matisse painted it, so he must.”
“What do you imagine he is trying to convey?” he asked.
“Chaos. Daring. Certainly a wild heart,” she said thoughtfully. “His mind must be a frenzy.”
“Along with his love life,” he replied, gazing back up at the piece.
She was as intrigued as she was embarrassed as he clamped his own chin with thumb and forefinger and she, too, looked back at the canvas with a restrained smile.
“What if it is his soul that has control of him when he paints, and not his mind at all?”
She couldn’t quite imagine what he meant and considered for a moment how to reply. “I just don’t see why he wouldn’t paint pictures like everyone else. Even like Toulouse-Lautrec did, or Monsieur Cézanne. They were innovative, and yet they were masters.”
“Not when they were alive, that’s for certain.
“Perhaps Monsieur Matisse craves the freedom to be defiant about how he sees the world.”
“How do you mean?”
“Perhaps he wishes to paint objects as he thinks or feels them, not as everyone else sees them.”
Suddenly she understood what he was saying. It was the very reason why she had run away from Vincennes, because she wanted the freedom to see the world differently than her parents did. Because she wanted to feel. She wanted to be like Apollinaire’s Gypsy.
“It is a terrible thing to be swallowed up by the world and be forced to see it as others do,” Eva finally said as their eyes met again. “Not to do what one feels.”
“I could not agree more—señorita. For many of us, conformity is impossible.”
“Picasso! ¡Aquí!” someone called, extinguishing their moment, and a young dark-haired man approached them. “You have been discovered here and there’s a photographer on his way to you!”
Eva felt a warm rush as they quickly left the room. He was Pablo Picasso? She had just flirted with a famous artist.
Needing a breath of fresh air, she made her way outside and leaned against a white stone pillar. Their little game of seduction had overwhelmed her. As much as she always said she was not an innocent, Eva was naive and out of her league with this man.
She stood still, trying to catch her breath as her mind swam with the potent mix of excitement and uncertainty. Eva had never felt so alive as she did at that moment. It really had been the most extraordinary couple of days and she did not dare to imagine what might lay ahead.
Chapter 4 (#)
That mysterious, spirited young woman from the museum had captured Picasso’s imagination and he could not get her out of his mind. Since the Salon des Indépendants two days ago, he had become obsessed with her. He had not thought to ask her name, but her face and small frame were as deeply etched into his mind now as if he had already had her in his bed. Or painted her.
He had stood there staring at her, and as she looked back at him with those guileless blue eyes and such a rosebud of a mouth, he had wanted to devour her.
But he must stop this. He was not a single man. He loved Fernande, and he was trying to remain faithful to her. And anyway, that girl was not his type. Fernande was statuesque and elegant, with her mythic beauty and luxuriant mane of flaming auburn hair. She was a woman who commanded every room she entered and possessed every man’s ardor. Voluptuous, worldly.
That little nymph was none of those things.
It made him smile to think how deliciously awkward the encounter at the exhibition had been. She was clearly not a sophisticated girl. By the look of her simple dress, she was probably from the countryside. Her eyes that flickered at him in the open light of the vast gallery were as bright and unassuming as a blue September sky. How refreshing simplicity did seem to him in the midst of the complicated world he lived in with Fernande. At the moment, he was questioning everything in his life.
Picasso stood barefoot and shirtless—as he always did when he worked. He stared blankly at the unfinished painting on his easel, the scent of wet paint and turpentine filling the air.
Fanny Tellier lay naked before him, posing on the bed beside his easel. She was a professional artist’s model and she had not moved for the better part of an hour. The painting should have been finished by now with such a compliant subject, but he could not stop thinking of the girl. He had felt sullen and unproductive for weeks, and this new distraction was not helping matters.
What a good thing that his abstract style hid the things he was really painting because today that girl was working her way into every brushstroke.
Cubism made him the master, with the power to represent people and objects as the sum total of their parts, and to place them in any order he liked. Picasso found it almost a Godlike power. He could have painted the status quo, kept on with his melancholy blue paintings, or his fascination with harlequins. That would have been far easier. He certainly knew, artistically, how to give people what they wanted. He could paint the beautiful pictures people expected like a child repeating his alphabet, and then reap the rewards. He had imitated the very best museum oils. His painting Science and Charity was right up there with the best of them, he thought smugly. And that he had painted at the age of fifteen. But realism had been such a hollow exercise since then. These days, he needed to explore, hunt, create, and he needed to matter to himself, not the critics.
The shadows lengthened on the wall as a slanting ray of first morning sunlight grew red, then mellowed to gold at dawn. It began to shimmer as it crept farther, slowly taking the space over, flooding the room. His candles flickered as they dwindled, wet wax pooling at their bases, and the glow still shone on the paint pots, brushes and rags. Ma jolie femme, he thought of the mysterious girl. How innocent she seemed, how unaware yet of the complexities of life that plagued him.
Through the windows, Picasso could see that the light over Montmartre was changing. Morning was fully breaking now. The steel-colored Paris sky was threatening rain and steadily muting the sunlight. Bathed in a shimmer of perspiration from the coal fire burning crimson beside her, Fanny finally moved her arm on the collection of pillows beneath her head. Her movement drove Picasso from the moment and frustrated him. He simply couldn’t put on canvas what he felt.
“That’s it for today.”
“Shall we get to it, then?” she asked, rising from the bed and approaching him.
Still naked and willing, she wound her long fingers seductively across Picasso’s shoulder, then down along the side of his arm. Fanny had a reputation for sleeping with her artists, and he knew that much, personally. This was not their first time. She kissed him then and he let her. For a moment, as he tasted the warmth of her mouth, he considered it. She was not all that different in form or age from the girl at the exhibition. They had similar hair and the same bright blue eyes, but his gut told him the similarities ended there. Gently, Picasso drew her hand from his arm and handed her a dressing gown.
“Not today.”
“Really, Pablo?” she declared with a note of effrontery. “That’s not like you at all.”
“You’re right, it wasn’t. But it is now.” He gently tied the silken sash at her waist.
“You’ve given up women?”
“Perhaps for a while. We shall see.” He shrugged.
“Does Fernande know that?” she asked as she moved across the cluttered studio to gather her clothes.
“I haven’t given her up, if that’s what you mean. I owe her too much for the years of poverty I forced her to endure with me. Or so she often reminds me.”
“You are staying with your mistress out of loyalty? How positively bourgeois,” she said with an amused smile as she began to dress. “Only love is a reason. Other than that, dear Pablo, you are fooling yourself.”
“I love Fernande very much. I always will.”
“Then why isn’t she the one posing for you as she used to? We’re old friends, you and I. You can tell me the truth. It would probably make you feel better if you did. You’ve worn that nasty frown the entire time I’ve been here so something is clearly troubling you. Why not get it off your chest?”
“All right, the truth is I’m not sure anymore that I am meant to be with her forever.”
“What has changed since the last time we spoke?”
“That’s just it, I don’t know for certain. We fight too often, and she seems never to have enough of my money to make her happy.” He raked his hands through his hair. “I’ll be thirty years old soon, and sometimes I feel like she and I want different things out of our lives. So much has changed since we met.”
She tipped her head and thought for a moment. A hint of a smile turned up the corners of her mouth. “You surprise me. You’re a deeper, more serious man than I thought. It’s a lot different than all that puffed-up bravado. I like it.”
After Fanny had dressed and put on her coat and hat, she returned to where Picasso was cleaning his paintbrushes. She was slipping on her black gloves as she approached him.
“Look, Pablo, maybe it’s none of my business, but the gossip in Paris is that she’s not all that loyal to you.”
He smiled and pressed a kiss onto her cheek, gently refusing the bait because, in a strange way, he cared about her. “I appreciate your trying to help, but our relationship is complex. We have both been unfaithful through the years,” he replied as he drew several francs from a ceramic jug on his working table where a clay pot of clean paintbrushes was sitting.
“Not that it’s altogether unappealing, mind you, but you’re also a complicated man, Pablo Picasso,” she said with a wan smile.
“Unfortunately, my dear, you don’t know the half of it,” he replied as he saw her to the door, eager to have her out of his studio.
After she had had gone, Picasso gazed over at the half-finished canvas, much of the paint still wet. He needed solitude—the isolation to make this piece into what it was inside his mind. There was a heaviness within him, and he stood there for a long while, basking in the silence that had been returned to him.
There had been too many voices in his head. Too much of the past.
His heart was not bound up enough by the work on his easel, and he needed it to be. But he was stuck. For Picasso to complete it, he knew he needed inspiration. What he needed was a muse.
Chapter 5 (#)
Saturday evening at the Moulin Rouge, Eva was busier with mending than she had been the first night. She waited with needle and thread just offstage, behind the edge of the heavy red velvet curtain, with her fingers trembling. She so very much needed to get this right.
“Be quicker about it than you were last night!” Mistinguett growled, thrusting a torn stocking at Eva as a wardrobe assistant approached them bearing a long-handled hairbrush to smooth the star’s hair back into a tight mahogany wave. “What are you staring at, you imbecile? Sew!” she barked when Eva did not move quickly enough.
Shaken from the moment, Eva realized that she had been transfixed by the glamorous star. She hadn’t noticed how openly she was staring until she caught a glimpse of Sylvette standing behind her, wearing a stricken expression. Quickly, Eva cast her own gaze downward and set back to work. It was easy enough to fix the tear, and Eva quickly offered the stocking back up to Mistinguett, who snatched it from her without a backward glance or a thank-you.
After the music began again and the actress burst onstage to thunderous applause, Eva tucked the needle and thread into the pocket of her skirt and peered out past the heavy curtain.
He hadn’t been there during the first act but he was there now. Picasso sat at the front table, along with the same group of boisterous Spaniards. Tonight, however, she saw that Monsieur Oller, the barrel-chested owner of the Moulin Rouge, was seated prominently beside him. He wore a stiff black suit and bow tie, with a heavy gold watch chain over his chest, and he and Picasso were conversing intensely with each other, heads together. Eva was duly impressed, but she knew she shouldn’t be surprised that the two appeared to be well acquainted.
Eva scanned the tables around him looking again for a girl who might be Picasso’s companion. It occurred to her that there just may well be a Madame Picasso, and she cringed at the thought. She realized then that she knew so little about him other than that his strange new style of painting had set the French capital on its ear. He was a bohemian renegade, and he was the talk of the town. Although there were several young women in the row behind him giggling and pointing sheepishly at the handsome young man, there was no woman seated prominently nearby him. Eva shook her head and smiled in self-reproach. Someone like Picasso was so far beyond her reach, even for a fantasy.
Busy with mending, Eva returned to her work, and by the time she managed to steal another glance, Picasso and his band of friends were gone.
Near midnight, after the show was over and they had returned to their room, Sylvette brushed out her long hair and sighed. Eva lay back against the pillow wearing her mother’s bright yellow kimono, the only bit of her mother she had brought away from Vincennes. She was watching the nightly ritual and thinking about the evening.
“She will have me fired, too, won’t she?” Eva asked, speaking of Mistinguett.
The fear and the possibility had been on her mind all day.
Sylvette stopped brushing her hair and glanced at Eva through the mirror’s reflection. “Not if she feels loyalty to you.”
“How on earth am I going to accomplish that?”
“A gift, perhaps?”
“I have nothing someone like her would value.”
“Where did you get that kimono?”
“My mother brought it with her from Poland. Her own mother made it.”
Sylvette turned around on the stool. “It really is lovely. And just the sort of exotic thing Mistinguett likes. Make her a gift of it.”
“It’s the only thing of my mother’s I have with me.” Eva again felt the swell of betrayal toward her parents. The days she had spent with them—the good ones, and far fewer bad—seemed sharper now in her mind since she no longer had them in her life. From her mother, she had taken a kimono, and from her father, a pinch of his pipe tobacco that she had sewn into one of the sleeves so that when she wore it, she would be reminded of them both.
“Well, then that’s a pity,” Sylvette replied. “Because I can think of no other way. I suppose it comes down to whether you want to live in the past, or secure your future. You said being here in Paris meant everything to you.”
“Of course it does.”
“You can always make another kimono. You won’t ever have another chance at a place like the Moulin Rouge.”
It would not be the same, of course, but Sylvette was right. After all, it was really just a robe and Eva could not afford not to make an offering in order to secure her job. She was beginning to understand that maturing really did mean letting go of a great many things from one’s youth, and Paris could not protect her from the reality in that.
The next afternoon, Eva and Sylvette were in the dressing room as the actresses and dancers slowly filed in past the racks of costumes and the littered makeup tables. Their faces were yet to be painted, and they were still wearing their street clothes. The girls who graced the stage at the Moulin Rouge all possessed an air of confidence, and Eva studied them with awe.
She had told Madame Léautaud she had no ambitions for the stage but of course that was not entirely true. What girl would not relish being the center of attention, adored and desired by audiences filled with handsome young men? Eva thought of Picasso and felt her cheeks warm. He fascinated her—for his celebrity, of course, but also for his bravado, and for the sensuality that seemed to pulse through him even when she saw him at a distance. She had never known anyone like him. She couldn’t tell Sylvette they had briefly met. Sylvette wouldn’t believe her, anyway. Besides, a man like Picasso—least of all a famous one—would never have real interest in a girl like Eva. Or so she thought. Steady, predictable Louis was the best she would likely ever have.
Poor, dear Lodwicz. Eva would never love him. Not if he were the last man on earth. If she wanted to settle for that sort of life, she could have stayed in Vincennes and married old Monsieur Fix.
“What the devil do you think you’re doing in here?”
Mistinguett’s harsh tone startled Eva, and the door slammed like an exclamation mark. Mistinguett stormed across the dressing room toward Eva, who had come in early to keep Sylvette company as she prepared for the show. Eva glanced up from Sylvette’s makeup table at the actress who stood with a half-full glass of champagne in one hand and the bottle in the other. Sylvette’s face paled as she shot to her feet.
“And what the deuce are you wearing?” Mistinguett asked, scanning Sylvette from head to toe.
Eva had brought the kimono to the Moulin Rouge that afternoon and, while they waited for the actors to arrive, Sylvette had playfully tried it on.
“It’s a kimono,” Sylvette volunteered sheepishly as Mistinguett poured more champagne from the bottle. “Isn’t it a lovely thing? It’s from the Orient. So exotic, sewn by monks! It has been in Marcelle’s family for years.”
“Is that true?” Mistinguett asked Eva suspiciously as she sipped from her glass.
“Of course it’s true,” Sylvette inserted.
“How did your family come by such exquisite fabric?” she asked as she set the bottle down, then reached out to finger the silk as though it were something precious.
“My grandfather brought it back from a trip to Osaka.”
“I would love to go somewhere so enchanting.” Mistinguett sighed as her lips turned up in a winsome smile—the firm wall of her hauteur slipping just slightly.
“Me, too,” Eva replied, meaning it, since she had never been anywhere but here to Paris.
“May I try it on?” she asked. Her tone was beginning to sound surprisingly friendly.
“Of course!” Sylvette intervened again, slipping off the kimono and handing it to the star.
Mistinguett slipped into the luxurious garment with the grace of a dancer, then sank into her own makeup chair. As she fingered the sleeve, she looked at Eva.
“How much would you take for it?”
“Oh, it’s not for sale but—”
“Everything has a price, chérie. So does everyone.”
“I don’t feel that way,” Eva bravely countered.
“You will one day, after you have been in Paris for a while...Martine, is it?”
“Marcelle. But my real name is Eva. Eva Gouel.”
She was not certain why, but suddenly Eva felt compelled to tell the truth. Perhaps it was because she knew Mistinguett had also created a new persona. It was something they shared.
In response, Mistinguett smiled. “I changed my name, too, when I first arrived here in the city. My real name is Jeanne Bourgeois. My mother was a seamstress on the Îsle de France, but I shall deny that to my death if you tell anyone. Perhaps that is why I like you. You should think about keeping your real name. It’s rather pretty. You’re actually quite a lovely creature yourself, with such a delicate face. Like a little geisha.” She smiled at Eva as she began to paint her own face with stage makeup. “Yes, that’s it, a mysterious Osaka geisha who hides everything behind her shyness. Especially because of the kimono. Take care around here, Eva. Or Marcelle—or you’ll be eaten alive.”
“I shall bear that in mind.” Eva smiled shyly.
“See that you do.”
“Mademoiselle Mistinguett! Five minutes!” a stagehand called out past the closed door, warning of the opening act.
“You are welcome to borrow it, anytime you like, though,” Eva said.
The actress slowly rose and slipped out of the kimono as artfully and elegantly as she had donned it. As they spoke further, she transformed herself into Titine, a comical stage vagabond, a character she had invented. “Perhaps in such a garment Maurice would actually notice me for a change.”
They both knew she meant the handsome young singer Maurice Chevalier, who had clearly captured Mistinguett’s attention, yet so far seemed to have eluded her charms.
“Besides, I don’t borrow things, chérie—only, on occasion, other women’s men. I have never found one worth keeping, anyway.”
A few moments later, Mistinguett clopped onto the stage as the comical vagabond Titine, wearing mismatched boots, an overcoat and a beret. When she was gone, Eva and Sylvette glanced at each other, and Eva dared herself to take a sip from Mistinguett’s champagne glass. Sylvette drank a swallow straight from the expensive bottle, then both of them broke out in peels of laughter.
* * *
It was no surprise to either girl when Mistinguett, in a swirl of diaphanous peach-colored chiffon, needed to be helped offstage after her final number that evening. She’d clearly had far too much to drink at intermission and throughout the night. How she had managed to make it through her vagabond number and then her tango with Maurice, Sylvette and Eva could not guess.
Eva and Sylvette watched from the wings as the final cancan was being danced to raucous hoots and hollers from the crowd. They hoped they could intercept Mistinguett as she exited the stage before Madame Léautaud—or worse yet, Monsieur Oller—could see her staggering. Eva wasn’t exactly certain why, but she was beginning to grow fond of the temperamental star, who was clearly more complex than she at first had seemed.
Offstage, Mistinguett sank onto the velveteen-covered divan across from her dressing table, leaned back and promptly vomited. Sylvette dove to press the actress forward, but the delicate skirt of Mistinguett’s tango costume bore the brunt nonetheless.
“Pour l’amour de Dieu!” Eva cried.
“Quick, find her something else to wear!” Sylvette called out as she frantically wiped the small amount of vomit with a scarf. “Monsieur Oller always comes backstage to congratulate everyone after the performance and he usually brings guests. We could all be sacked for this!”
Eva felt a mounting panic. She couldn’t lose this job, not when she’d only just gotten it.
“Grab your kimono while I get her out of the costume! And shake some perfume on it to block that horrendous odor!”
Mistinguett was moaning and had seemed for a moment not to know where she was.
“I need more champagne,” she mumbled.
“What you need is a café and a bath,” Sylvette snapped. “Eva, go tell the stagehand to bring a café as quickly as he can! In the meantime, I’ll help her change.”
Eva ran off and returned a few minutes later bearing a cup of coffee. Mistinguett was sitting more alertly and wearing Eva’s yellow kimono. The fabric draped around her body in waves and fit her far better than it ever had Eva. She felt her heart squeeze with longing and regret for all she had given up in a life with her family, and now, at this awkward moment, she dearly missed her mother especially.
“Marcelle, can the costume be cleaned? It’s such delicate chiffon,” Mistinguett asked sadly as she rubbed her temple.
“I am a seamstress, not a laundress.”
“Handiwork is handiwork,” she snapped back uncharitably as panic took control.
Eva knew she could clean it since her mother had patiently taught her that a combination of baking soda and French Javelle water would work even on the most delicate fabric. Tears pricked the backs of her eyes at the memory. But she knew she deserved to feel sad. Eva certainly no longer deserved her family’s love for the way she had left them. Perhaps she could make a difference that would somehow begin to make amends. “I will have it good as new for the show tomorrow,” she promised as Mistinguett sipped from the demitasse of coffee, her pale face brightening slowly.
“You are a wonder, Eva. I’m sorry I misjudged you. All right, I’ve said it,” Mistinguett murmured just as the dressing room door burst open.
Wreathed in a plume of cigar smoke, a group of young, dark-haired men strode in led by the stout, white-haired Joseph Oller, clenching a cigar between his teeth. Though the owner’s presence was predictable after the show, tonight the girls were all a bit startled by it. Eva and Sylvette stepped back as Mistinguett rose from her divan. The length of the yellow kimono fell around her like a pool of water, hugging the ample curves of her tall willowy frame.
“I brought a few gentlemen I would like you to meet. Mistinguett, may I present the noted poet Guillaume Apollinaire, his friend Ramón Pichot, and this is the man of the moment here in Paris, the artist Pablo Picasso.”
Eva felt a jolt of surprise seeing him. Standing at the back of the room, she was hidden by the piles of costume pieces, shoes and hats. Nevertheless, she felt a tremor surge through her and she reached out her hands behind herself to clutch a dressing table for support. It wouldn’t do at all to go weak-kneed now.
Picasso was as alluring as she remembered, and in the evening’s buttery-rich gaslight, he appeared even more exotic with those great coal-black eyes above a cleverly quirked half smile.
Unlike the last time she had seen him, tonight Picasso looked every bit the confident and celebrated artist. He was wearing neatly creased black trousers, a black sweater that seemed to hug his tight chest and broad back and well-polished black shoes. A forelock of hair that fell untamed onto his forehead was the single element that hinted at what his dark eyes promised.
“Monsieur Picasso, it is a delight,” Mistinguett said flirtatiously.
As she extended a feathery hand to him, the elegant sleeve of the kimono slipped back from her wrist revealing her slim, pale forearm. Eva did not believe anyone had a right to be quite so beautiful.
“What the devil have you got on?” Oller huffed with exaggerated indignation. “You don’t receive gentlemen in a dressing gown like that! Monsieur Picasso, Monsieur Apollinaire, Monsieur Pichot, my apologies. Apparently, my star here—”
“I was fitting her new costume,” Eva blurted, hearing her own voice tumble out as though it had come from someone else.
An awkward silence pulsed through the group as Oller scowled at her. “A costume? That?”
“Yes, for a geisha number I’m working on,” Mistinguett responded with a believable smile, retrieving the moment.
Eva felt her face flush as she stepped back, bumping into the dressing table. She heard the bottles clatter behind her and gripped the top of the table again to steady them. She felt as though she would collapse from embarrassment.
“That is definitely creative,” Oller at last proclaimed. He clenched the cigar in his teeth more tightly and his smile lengthened.
Finally across the room, Eva’s gaze met Picasso’s.
As the chatter about the geisha act faded to the background, Eva watched Picasso close the distance between them.
“So we meet again,” he said with a seductive half smile. She felt her body weaken. “Clearly, it is fate.”
“But we have not really met, have we?”
“It was my great mistake not to have asked your name the last time.”
“I am Marcelle.”
“And I am Picasso.”
“Yes, I know,” she said, smiling awkwardly at her own response.
“But did you know also, mademoiselle, that I am going to paint you?”
“Are you?” she asked as the others continued to talk and laugh, which helped to shelter their quiet conversation. Eva had been thrown off balance by his bold declaration and she was doing her best to hide that fact.
“Oh, most definitely.”
“And when might that be, Monsieur Picasso?” She bit back a soft laugh, suddenly enjoying their flirtation.
“Tonight, if you shall permit me,” he answered. “I am too inspired by your beauty to wait any longer than that.”
Eva caught a glimpse then of the very tall man beyond Picasso who had been introduced as Guillaume Apollinaire—a man she had always wanted to meet because of his evocative poetry. But at the moment there really was no one in the room but Pablo Picasso—even if his advances sounded like lines from a penny novella.
“So then tell me, is Marcelle your real name, or just the one you use in Paris?” Picasso asked her beneath the chatter of the others around them. “So many people I meet here want to be someone different.”
His magnificent Spanish accent and his potent gaze had swiftly shut down all of her defenses. How could he have guessed?
“I haven’t quite decided that yet,” she answered, trying her best to sound nonchalant.
“Care is good. Caution, less so.”
“You speak now only of names when you speak of caution?” she asked coyly.
“I speak of whatever moves you not to take too much care with me, mademoiselle,” he said huskily. “Perhaps I should have asked your given name.”
Saints be preserved, but he was quick with a parry! Clever, forthright and handsome. She was not at all certain she could keep up but it was exciting to try. Especially with those huge black eyes seizing all of her attention and making her blush.
“If you must know, it’s Eva—a most unglamorous Eva Céleste Gouel,” she confessed.
Picasso gently placed a hand at the low point of her back. No one in the room noticed the gesture, which made the moment even more deliciously intimate.
“When I slip out of the dressing room, follow me a moment later,” he said matter-of-factly in a way that made it beyond her power to object. She felt herself grow excited by the danger of his request.
It seemed only a moment later that Picasso was clutching her hand tightly and they were running together like children through the lamplit streets up toward the foot of Montmartre, the glorious vista of Paris and all of the city lights shining brightly behind them.
Laughing and holding hands, they trudged up the many steep steps of the rue Foyatier. Then they hurried across the rue Lepic and down the cobblestoned rue Ravignan toward the artist’s enclave at the Bateau-Lavoir.
Picasso squeezed Eva’s hand when they finally arrived at the ramshackle building in the center of a sloping square, lush with rustling chestnut trees. She knew this shabby old place, with its sagging roof full of filthy glass skylights, was a haven to impoverished painters, models and thieves. She and Louis had passed by it many times on their way to Au Lapin Agile or la Maison Rose. She had found it distinctive, too, and even a little charming, because it seemed constantly peppered with pigeons, stray cats and fat gold leaves.
There was usually a crowd of Spaniards gathered there, sitting on overturned crates and stools, one of them invariably strumming out a tune on a battered old guitar. But tonight they were alone. Only the gaslight from the streetlamps kept them company.
“You are stunning,” Picasso said.
It took all of her effort not to squirm childishly beneath his potent stare. He smelled faintly of pipe tobacco, wine and the distinctive scent of his maleness. The combination was strangely intoxicating, and Eva could feel that her throat had gone dry. He looked at her with a rich expression of expectation. Yet it was not rude or arrogant. She felt the inevitability in it.
“You do know how to flatter a girl,” she said. Her knees were impossibly weak. “More men in Paris really should learn how to do that.”
“It is a thoroughly Spanish trait, mademoiselle, I assure you,” he said as he encircled her with his arms. Then he pulled her back with him against the crumbling wall of the house, pressing himself up against her. Eva gasped as he covered her mouth with his.
A soft moan escaped his lips and Eva squeezed her eyes shut. She was fighting a dizziness that was engulfing her as they kissed, as she felt his rigid body against her wanting more. Her defenses crumbled and a moment later he was clutching her hand tightly in his own again and leading her inside the old house.
Someone was cooking in one of the studios and the strong aroma of spices was sensual and inviting. The floorboards and stairs creaked beneath their footsteps as they made their way through sounds of guitar music and chatter behind closed doors. All of it—this odd place, her innocence and desire—mixed together in her mind along with the excitement and fear of something she had never done before, disarming her. It was then, as if he sensed it, that he squeezed her hand more tightly, warm, powerful and commanding. His touch reassured her and eased the fear. Eva let him lead her the rest of the way. She wanted to be here, she reminded herself. She had come away willingly.
Picasso’s studio was at the end of a corridor. He turned a doorknob and pressed back the door, which made a long, low squeal. Then he held out his arm with a gallant flourish, issuing her inside.
Eva took two steps and was stopped by the profusion of work that lay scattered before her. The room, with giant windows and peeling plaster walls, was littered with canvases, large and small ones, hanging in a riotous jumble on the walls. The color, the light and the clutter, all of it together, made her gasp. Her hand flew to her lips but not in time to stifle the sound of surprise. Picasso bit back another smile, which he meant for her to see.
“Bienvenida,” he said as he closed the door behind them.
The odor of paint and turpentine in the small space was bitingly strong.
Picasso’s smudged windows, full of badly painted panes, dominated the space and ushered in the silver light from a shimmering full moon. He lit an oil lamp on a table in the center of the room, illuminating the many canvases with mellow light.
Some of the works hung crookedly, some were straight—all vying for a cramped bit of space. Other canvases were propped against the walls, three-and four-deep; they were stacked on tables on top of loose pages filled with sketches. More were tossed onto the studio floor like litter, along with paint boxes, jars, squashed tubes of paint and rags. The sheer volume of work was astonishing. It seemed to Eva like a great creative explosion.
But there were finer details of the place that came into focus once Eva allowed herself to breathe in and see it all. There was a small wooden animal cage on the floor, and beside it were two roughly sculpted stone heads, perched on wooden pedestals, remarkable to her for how antiquarian they appeared. The only real piece of furniture, besides an easel, was a small iron-frame bed covered over with a pretty apple-green quilt embroidered with red roses and red fringe.
“You...live here?” she asked. She turned back to him and their eyes met.
“Once. But not any longer. Yet, it is still the place where my soul resides.”
Not quite knowing what he meant by that—or how to react to any of this evening—Eva picked up a sketch that was lying on the table. It was boldly erotic—two women open to an animal-like male figure with a dark forelock of hair. She had never seen anything so carnal and she felt embarrassed. Picasso looked at her unfazed.
“It is a satyr and his nymphs,” he said.
Eva glanced up at him, pressing back her naive shock. She could feel the hesitation in her own expression. “Is the satyr supposed to be...you?”
“If you wish.”
“I don’t understand.”
Picasso shrugged and flashed his disarmingly sheepish smile. It was a response of equivocation. “I see life differently,” he said with a charmingly casual simplicity.
“Clearly, you do.”
Oh, dear, she should not be here, she thought, no matter what she had told herself earlier. This place was cold and plain and it felt wildly dangerous. Eva was suddenly terrified of her own innocence—of displeasing him. But there must be a first time for everyone, her conscience silently argued, and her heart raced. Her first time, here now with a great artist, would be something she would never forget. She trembled and tried her best to look mature. She felt herself being drawn into him so powerfully that she couldn’t run even if she wanted to.
Eva pushed away the thoughts competing in her mind. Trying to buy time to process the moment, she focused on a stack of large canvases propped on the floor beneath the window. The collection of paintings had been done in rich shades of dark blues and grays, and the images at the center of each were absolutely haunting, gaunt, bereft characters. They were nothing at all like the charismatic, carefree man who had brought her here. Rather, they were people who all exemplified some dreadfully sad tale, and Eva could feel the human tragedy in each of them.
Eva knew nothing about art. But she knew what moved her. These were powerful images, all so raw, and very different from the Cubist works at the exhibition of a sort she was told he, too, painted. Her body reacted to the drama in these before her mind could. What did it mean that he could create in two such different styles? Was there a story? Her head throbbed with a jumble of questions and emotions and it made her feel insecure to wonder about them. Clearly there was more to Picasso than what he had allowed her so far to see.
Next in the stack of canvases was a portrait of a young, dark-haired man, clothed all in black with a glowing backdrop. His pale face, looking directly at the viewer, black eyes wide and plaintive, was rendered almost cadaverously white by the intense blue of the background. The face had a poignant sadness that drew her almost as profoundly as the women had.
“Yet like the satyr, that is me also,” Picasso said, breaking the silence between them. His tone suddenly was disarmingly tentative. She felt the vulnerability in it, which was something she certainly had not expected. “Another side of me.”
Such two starkly different sides of the same man, Eva thought—a confident young painter, handsome and sensual, and yet something far more vulnerable—as she compared the whimsically erotic sketch on the table with this self-portrait. Picasso waited patiently for Eva to react, but instead she looked away and returned her attention to the rest of the canvases against the wall. The final painting at the back of the large stack bore an image of a man’s face and head, eyes closed, painted in profile. The figure was illuminated by the stark yellow glow from a single candle. There was a bullet wound visible at his temple.
Startled, Eva glanced back at Picasso. His wry smile had disappeared, replaced by something deeper and more somber. The anguish in his wide black eyes said that he had not wanted her to see this painting. Perhaps he had forgotten it was there.
“Who was he?” she asked cautiously.
“His name was Carlos Casagemas. We came to Paris together from Barcelona. He was my best friend...before he committed suicide,” Picasso replied grimly as he approached her. He changed the subject by putting his hands firmly on her upper arms and clamping them tightly.
There was tremendous force in his grip. He was holding on to her with possession now, and his face was full of a brooding sensuality. Eva could no longer think as the sound of her own heart pulsing filled her ears.
Picasso released one of Eva’s arms and began to slowly unbutton her white cotton blouse as he locked his gaze onto hers again. He was nothing like the boys she had known in Vincennes. Nothing at all like Louis. He pressed the full length of his body against her then as he had done outside. He breathed softly against her neck as his warm fingertips met the skin of her bare breast. He withdrew slightly and challenged her to look away from his gaze.
“I’m not an expert but the way you are staring at me right now is not how an artist properly assesses a model. I live with enough artists around me to know that much,” she nervously murmured. Yet the words came as a weak refrain. “Was that not, after all, why you invited me here, to model for you?”
She tried desperately to press back her deepening arousal. She glanced at the bed in the alcove. When she turned back, Picasso closed the gap between them with a sudden, sensual kiss and Eva moved willingly into his embrace.
His fingers ran over the hard point of one nipple and then the other as he kissed her more deeply, filling her mouth with his tongue.
“I want to see all of you,” he said in a throaty Spanish whisper.
Was it his fame, how shatteringly attractive he was or his surprise possession of her that was most alluring? She had not fully imagined any of this an hour ago as she had stood in the actress’s dressing room. What was happening was so forbidden—surely a sin. It was certainly wrong, yet she wanted it just as much as he did. They moved together as one—still kissing, touching, bound by each other—to the little bed in the corner of the room. Their kisses grew more urgent and Eva lost sight of the paintings, of their conversation, of all rational thought. The rough need flaring through Picasso’s warm lips finally took total control of her. She felt her body open to him even before either of them were bare. She was aware of the ache for him deep inside herself as he stripped off her skirt, her stockings, her camisole and her drawers, as he caressed her body, lingering skillfully on every tingling curve and rise of flesh. Please let me be good enough for him, she desperately thought.
He released himself from her for a moment to draw off his own clothes. Then, with moonlight shining through the window on him, he paused before her, naked and unashamed.
They did not speak further. There was no need for it.
Arched over her a moment later, yet still restrained, Picasso ran his hand along her supple body with the precision of a sculptor. His fingers were an artist’s tool moving deftly along the lines and curves of her. He moved until all of her senses were wildly alive, tender and achingly sensitive. She was trembling as his fingers finally found the untouched place between her legs. As he kissed her again Eva tasted a moan of desire deep in her own throat.
In the flickering light of the oil lamp, Picasso forced Eva to lie still beneath him. With exploring kisses and languorously patient caresses, his tongue moved as his fingers had done, until desire blotted out all of her remaining sense of reason, touching her in ways she had never even known how to fantasize about.
He finally clamped his hands on her hips to mount her, and the pleasure turned to a swift sharp pain in a place deep inside her. Only then did she remember how fragile innocence was. He was rough and frenzied with his own need, unaware still, in that passionate moment, of her virginity. She tried her best to open to him as he moved, but her body resisted and she arched her back as he pressed hard into her. A moment later as he groaned into her ear, the pain disappeared and she rocked with him into oblivion, forgetting everything else in the world but this dark-eyed stranger and how he had just now changed her life forever.
Chapter 6 (#)
“Marcelle Humbert, I tell you, you are absolutely brilliant!” Sylvette squealed dramatically after Eva tried her best to slip silently into their room early the next morning.
She was unable to think of anything but Picasso: his warmth, the way he tasted. Her skin still tingled from his caresses. Not wanting the fantasy to end, she had left Montmartre while he was still sleeping. She had gone away so swiftly before dawn because she could not have borne Picasso waking and asking her to leave. He was too famous for it to have ended otherwise.
She knew it would be better this way.
Sylvette knelt beside Eva’s bed, her eyes wide with excitement. “Mistinguett is going to do a number as a geisha, and Monsieur Oller loves the idea! She thinks you are her savior after last night. She has even invited us to lunch today before the show. Can you imagine, she wants us to meet her friends? And all of this because of your lovely little kimono. What an impression you have made at the Moulin Rouge!”
Eva thought again of how her mother had given her that kimono, and regret seized her for a moment. I’m sorry, Mama, Tata, for disappointing you both, she thought, and her heart squeezed. It felt like a lifetime since she had seen her parents. Still, how could she turn back to them now? What would they think of her especially after what she had done last night?
Sylvette paused and looked at Eva more critically. “Where were you last night, by the way? You didn’t come home. Were you downstairs with Louis, finally?”
Eva was uncertain why but she still didn’t feel she could tell Sylvette the truth about Picasso. But her friend would not have believed her, anyway. She could barely believe it herself. Eva grinned coyly and sank onto the edge of her bed.
“Why you little minx, you!” Sylvette giggled, and Eva did not deny it. “So, will you join us for lunch, then? Please? You won’t back out on me, will you? Mistinguett is bringing a friend apparently, and it would be so exceedingly awkward just the three of us without you.”
“All right, yes, I’ll be there, if it means that much to you.” Eva rolled her eyes and smiled. “But only because you helped me get the job in the first place.”
“Oh, splendid!” Sylvette sank back on her heels, the glow of victory shining on her pretty face. “And she really does like you now, you know. You positively saved her with that geisha idea. I never asked you how you thought of it.”
“I learned to be resourceful growing up with little money,” Eva replied as she slipped off her shoes and rubbed her toes, sore from the walk out of Montmartre. She hadn’t wanted to take a trolley and the route was long even just from the subway stop.
“This is going to be exciting!” Sylvette steepled her hands and tucked them beneath her chin. “There’s no telling what can happen with a woman like Mistinguett once she likes you and offers to take you to lunch in her glamorous Paris.”
Eva didn’t have anything suitable to wear for a luncheon with anyone important, which should have concerned her. Secretly, though, her mind was still humming with thoughts of what she and Picasso had done together, and she couldn’t have cared less about dresses or hats or gloves. She was beginning now to regret having left so swiftly before she’d given him a chance to tell her if he had feelings for her, and she wondered what it would make him think of her. Was that not what loose women did, leave before dawn? He was probably accustomed to that, so many women at his feet. Of course he was. He was young, handsome and nearly famous. He had probably forgotten her already.
“Why on earth are there tears in your eyes?” Sylvette asked, bringing Eva back to the moment. “Oh, I will kill Louis if he’s hurt you!”
“He didn’t.” Eva sniffed, brushing her eyes with the backs of her hands. She nearly added that it wasn’t him at all but she thought better of that. “And I would appreciate you not mentioning it to him, either. I’m sure he would be embarrassed that I told you.”
“Your secret, pretty Marcelle Humbert, is safe with me—your very dearest friend,” Sylvette solemnly promised.
Eva stood, feeling the need to freshen up. Suddenly she didn’t want to be reminded of what she had done. As much as she had enjoyed it, she was also a little ashamed. In spite of how dispassionate she was trying to be about it all—and how adult—at the end of the day, Eva could not let go of the reality that she had given her virginity to a virtual stranger. The little girl who still lived inside of her heart wept over her precious surrender, even as Eva smiled and laughed with Sylvette.
Perhaps he would call on her again at the Moulin Rouge. After all, there were such things as romances. But she felt vulnerable and silly for even thinking about it.
Eva gathered up her soap and a towel, getting ready to go down the hall to the bath. Before Sylvette could say anything else a knock sounded at the door. She wasn’t certain why, but she hesitated a moment before she opened it. On the other side was a young deliveryman. Freckles and a driver’s cap met her, along with his dutiful expression. Not many people sent deliveries to a humble place like la Ruche, she thought.
“Mademoiselle Gouel?” he asked with an adolescent lift of his heels.
There was a red leather-bound book poised before him in his hands. The title was displayed in prominent gold lettering: Satyrs, Pan and Dionysus: Discussions in Mythology.
She nodded and the man handed the book to her. There was no note, but she knew where it had come from. To know that he thought of her as something more than a night’s dalliance filled Eva with more excitement than she knew how to process. For an instant, she hugged the book to her chest. Then she closed the door and reluctantly turned around. She knew she was beaming.
“What the devil is that?” Sylvette asked.
“Oh, nothing important. You should wear that violet-colored dress today, the one with the little pearl buttons. The fabric brings out the color of your eyes,” Eva said divertingly.
“Do you really think so?”
“Absolutely. By the way, who is joining us today?”
Sylvette laid two dresses across her bed and looked at them with her hands on her hips as she answered absently. “I’m not totally certain other than that Mistinguett said her name is Fernande Olivier.”
* * *
Le Dôme was the best of the four cafés on the corner of the bustling boulevards Montparnasse and Raspail. It was shaded by an elegant bower of horse chestnut trees and had a butter-yellow awning. Le Dôme was a lively spot, harboring a tangle of closely packed tables with chairs spilling out onto the sidewalk. All of it was full of such life, young Parisians chattering endlessly about politics, art and literature. The newly opened la Rotonde across the street was swiftly becoming its main rival, and there was always someone interesting among the crowds, drinking, smoking, laughing and debating. Progress and possibility was everywhere.
Once, Eva had passed by and caught a glimpse of Isadora Duncan, the beautiful and famous dancer. She had been not two feet away, impossibly striking in a white turban, white dress and man’s black silk necktie. Her spider-long legs were crossed and she held a cigarette poised in an ivory holder, allowing it to punctuate her thoughtful dialogue as she conversed with a group of young people collected around her.
Eva secretly craved an opportunity to be back at that café, near people like that. Fame really was so intoxicating, and she was absolutely starstruck. Just to sip an aperitif, and listen to conversations around her there, was to drink in the pure magic of this city.
Today, Eva felt almost confident in a pale blue dress, ornamented by a delicate string of seed pearls, a beige cloche hat and beige high button shoes. She walked along the boulevard toward the café with Sylvette, who was wearing the violet dress Eva had suggested. Eva had borrowed her own ensemble from a girl down the hall at la Ruche who modeled frequently for an artist named Maurice Utrillo. Fortunately, it fit Eva as if it were her own. In it, she felt for the first time prettier than her tall, willowy roommate, for this one day at least.
When Mistinguett saw them approach, she stood and waved them over. She was seated at a banquette at the back of the café, up against a wall of mirrored glass. Waiters dressed in black-and-white wearing long white aprons wove through the noisy place, full trays aloft. The other young woman with Mistinguett sat with her back to the door. From her reflection, Eva could see that she was tall and her bearing bespoke a relaxed grace that was intimidating. She wore a large hat decorated with a rose-colored ribbon and large pearl-and-garnet earrings. She glanced up but did not stand as Mistinguett embraced each of them warmly.
“Oh, isn’t this delightful! These are the two girls I was telling you about who positively saved me with Monsieur Oller.”
Eva saw the young woman’s face now as she turned her head on a long slender neck. She was lovely with such expressive, wide, olive-colored eyes, full lush lips and long auburn hair in a smooth fall beneath her hat. She extended her own silk-gloved hand to Eva’s bare one as their eyes met.
“Ah, yes, the seamstress with the kimono,” she said in a strikingly seductive voice.
“I am Marcelle Humbert.”
“And I am Madame Picasso,” she said. A reserved smile slipped onto her beautiful face in the same graceful way as all of her other movements.
Eva felt her knees buckle beneath the weight of her slim legs. Her stomach seized with a wave of nausea that, for a moment, was overwhelming. The wife of Picasso’s brother, she hoped. Oh, please, yes, let that be the case! Or a cousin of the artist, perhaps? But no, this woman—this Fernande Olivier—would never have spoken the title with such boastful pride if that were so. Breathless, Eva sank onto the empty chair beside Fernande as Sylvette now extended her hand to her.
“Madame Picasso, it is an honor,” Sylvette gushed, wide-eyed, with dimples showing. “I have seen your husband at the Moulin Rouge. He is terribly talented. They say his work is genius.”
“Indeed.” Fernande nodded noncommittally as she tapped her cup with her finger.
Mistinguett’s expression was more reserved suddenly, and Eva saw the two women exchange a glance. She seemed to want to say something but then the waiter approached to pour the wine. Fernande leaned back in her chair.
“It’s a pleasure to meet someone so resourceful,” Fernande said to Eva. “I respect that in a woman. That is certainly what it takes to achieve anything worthwhile in this very competitive city.”
“Merci.” It was all she could manage to say. She still could not process what was happening. He was married? She felt like such a fool. Why hadn’t she suspected? Assumed? Even the thought of it. And of course the wife of a great artist would look like this: tall, elegant, confident.
Eva hated this woman suddenly. But she hated herself more. She longed to give in to her tears and run out of the restaurant, but that would be to reveal everything, including her stupidity. He had taken more advantage of her than she had even guessed possible. Captivating or not, Pablo Picasso was a bastard! Eva drank half her glass of wine in one swallow.
“So, have you been married long?” she asked, suddenly wanting to know.
Mistinguett and Picasso’s wife exchanged another glance.
“We are not technically married, Mademoiselle Humbert. Although, I have been with him long enough, and suffered enough of his failures and his poverty, to claim the title. So, unapologetically, I have taken it.”
Eva looked at Sylvette, who seemed perfectly charmed by the explanation. “We women need to claim what we want. If we don’t, we will never get anything.”
“We will be emancipated one day, after all. The suffragette movement is growing everywhere,” Mistinguett agreed. “It’s important to remind our men that there is no going back. It is the wave of the future.”
Fernande sipped her wine gracefully. “Yes, well, Pablo, Monsieur Picasso, is quite a traditionalist. He’s a Spaniard, you know. He prefers the old ways in spite of himself, and he fights me on all of it.”
“But he’s such an innovator in his art,” Mistinguett pointed out. “There’s not much traditional about that.”
Remembering the sketch of the smiling satyr, Eva thought how true that was. He was a cad. He had deceived her and then used her. She must keep that foremost in her mind now.
“So, tell me about yourselves. Where are you from?” Fernande asked casually.
As Fernande spoke, Eva noticed that her skin was practically translucent, flawless. With her thick red hair, exotic almond-shaped eyes and deeply sensual voice, she really was an uncommon presence. It was easy to see how Picasso had been attracted to her.
Who wouldn’t have fallen in love with her?
They could not have been more different. Eva, with her slim shape, delicate features, wide blue eyes and glossy mahogany hair pinned tightly into waves, suddenly felt like an adolescent compared to this stunningly beautiful woman.
“I am from Vincennes originally,” Eva finally managed, executing perfectly practiced Parisian French. No one would ever suspect her mother’s more humble Polish origins.
“And what about you?” Fernande asked, glancing over at Sylvette. “You are in the chorus?”
“But I hope to make it more one day. I would like to become an actress.”
Fernande smiled, and there was an element of the Cheshire cat about her expression. Eva felt a strange chill just before she looked down at her menu.
“I recommend the fricaseed chicken here. Although I am an absolute slave to their simple plate of Yorkshire ham, a slice of cheese, and to have it with a pint of dark beer. Those penniless days for Pablo and me never do quite fully leave either of us, I’m afraid, and we both have begun to remember them rather fondly.”
How could I have been so naive? Eva thought frantically, her stomach as tied in knots as her heart was. This was the man—another woman’s man—to whom she had foolishly given her innocence. How could she think he might fall in love with her?
Still, lunch was cordial. Eva did her best to participate in the conversation, in order to keep above any sort of suspicion. She would have preferred to keep hating Fernande Olivier, but she found that she could not. For the most part, other than that hitch in her tone, Fernande seemed an intelligent, funny, if slightly quirky, young woman with a bit of a flair for the dramatic. By the end of lunch Eva had no difficulty seeing how Picasso—or any man—could have fallen completely, hopelessly, in love with her.
After the lunch, the women stood out on the boulevard waiting for a cab. Eva now noticed Fernande’s trendsetting hobble skirt. She had seen ads for them from the Maison de Poiret. It was the height of fashion. “You really didn’t need to pay,” Eva said as a coal-laden cart trundled past them, along with several shiny black automobiles.
“It was my pleasure,” Fernande replied. “Anyone who would risk their own employment in order to help my dear friend is certainly a friend to me.”
“Sylvette and I are off to the theater for rehearsal. How about the two of you?” Mistinguett asked.
“Back to the passage Dantzig,” replied Eva, not wanting Fernande to know about the humble artists’ colony at la Ruche where she and Sylvette had their room.
“Same direction,” said Fernande. “Please do share my cab.”
There was no way she could have refused the offer. And she didn’t want to, anyway. A curiosity about the young woman so different from herself but who had attracted the same man had begun to build inside of her.
It was the first time Eva would be riding in a motorcar, so she stepped tentatively onto the running board, fearing it might move suddenly and carry her away. Motorcars had always seemed rather loud and a little frightening as they chugged up and down the busy Paris boulevards. Yet they were clearly the wave of the future and she was excited to experience now what so many others already had. Even though it was a vehicle for hire, when she stepped inside, it seemed to Eva the most elegant conveyance in the world.
“You wouldn’t know it to look at me now, dressed up in all this finery, but I came from the banlieue myself,” Fernande suddenly admitted as the cab merged out into busy traffic. “When Pablo found me, I was modeling for two francs for an eight-hour day and he was a starving artist who could barely speak French. And when he did it was comical. He really seemed quite the caveman to me.”
Eva looked over at her as she spoke but she didn’t respond. She wouldn’t have known what to say, anyway. She had never been so confused by her emotions or all that was happening.
“I’m not sure why I am telling you this,” Fernande admitted, feeding the silence that had suddenly fallen between them.
“I can confess something, too.” Eva was surprised at herself but she continued. “I ran away from my home.”
“So did I.”
“Marcelle isn’t even my real name,” Eva went on, feeling as though she needed to share something after Fernande had confided in her. She hoped Fernande would reveal something more about herself and Picasso. “It’s Eva, Eva Gouel. I’m half Polish, half French. Not Parisian at all.”
Fernande smiled at her and a spark of understanding flared between them. “My given name is Amélie Lang, but I have been using Fernande Olivier since the day I arrived in Paris. I use whichever name the moment dictates. I like the sound and the feel of each, for different reasons, I suppose.... It seems like we have quite a lot in common, you and I.”
“It would seem so,” Eva agreed.
When they arrived at la Ruche on the passage Dantzig, the motorcar chugged to a stop, the glass front windshield clattering. A moment later, the driver came around to open the door for her. Eva was glad that the humble beehive-shaped building was hidden behind an ivy-covered stone wall.
“Do you like the circus?” Fernande asked as Eva was exiting the car. She turned back to Fernande.
“I’m not sure. I’ve never been.”
“You’ve never been to the circus? Oh, heavens, we go to the the Medrano all the time. Pablo was keen on it for a while so he could paint the performers—the harlequins and clowns. He found the ragtag lot of them appealingly vulnerable, he said. For me, it’s just a night’s diversion, but I confess, I’m weary of it all. You would spice things up a bit if you joined our regular group.”
More than you know, Eva thought as she smiled innocently at Fernande.
“Have you a gentleman you could bring along? A suitor, perhaps?”
Louis came to mind. Eva knew she could not very well agree to join Picasso and his lover without a man beside her. At the very least, Louis would give her strength to go through with such an absurd proposition. She was still angry with Picasso for deceiving her, and yet it was beyond her to decline an invitation that would permit her to see him again. And to see how he would react.
“I suppose so,” she finally replied.
“Not one you’re mad for, then?” Fernande asked inquisitively.
“He’s only a friend, so far.” Eva shrugged as the driver waited at the open car door. She knew she was batting her eyes with rather irritating frequency, but she was doing so intentionally. The theater had already taught her many things.
“Good, then, so you are open to a new suitor. Because we generally bring friends, and Monsieur Picasso and I have been trying for ages to set up our friend, Guillaume Apollinaire, who has recently separated from his lover. He would like you, you’re just his type. He’s something of a noted poet. You may have heard of him?”
“The name sounds familiar,” she demurred, not wanting to sound like the outright fan she was, since that would set her at an obvious disadvantage.
“He’s Polish like you, so the two of you should get on like a house on fire.”
“Thank you for the invitation, Madame Picasso.”
Eva nearly choked on the title, but since they had only just met that day, it seemed the appropriate way to address her until she was invited to do otherwise. She certainly couldn’t call her Mademoiselle Olivier, after the stand she had made for Picasso. Fernande reached out of the cab and took Eva’s hand.
“Monday evening, then. It’s all settled. It will be great fun. And you must call me Fernande. All of my real friends do. I shall leave two tickets for you at the door and there will be someone to see you to our seats. Perhaps we can all go for a drink afterward.”
“I look forward to it,” Eva forced herself to say while she smiled as sweetly as she could. But her anticipation of the Circus Medrano was for very different reasons than Fernande ever could have thought. She looked forward to it only so that she could see Picasso again, and confront him.
* * *
“Believe me, Fernande Olivier cares far more for the title than the man. They have grown apart. She is already married, you know, so she can never truly be Madame Picasso, but that doesn’t stop her from going about posing as if she were.”
Mistinguett spoke the revelation in a low gossipy tone. It was an hour before the Friday night show and they were in the dressing room. Mistinguett stood, statuesque, wearing Eva’s yellow kimono for a fitting, the garment melting across her distinctive curves. Her hair was done up under a black wig, and her face was powdered and painted white, her lips made red, in a cliché imitation of a geisha. She was going to try out the new number tonight in the first act.
Something was missing however from the kimono. It lacked the dramatic flare it needed to compete with the other glittery costumes. But what? Eva silently inspected her beloved garment as she stood facing the star. She assessed the hem, and then the long, bell-shaped sleeves, remembering the small sachet of her father’s pipe tobacco that she had sewn inside the cuff. She felt the familiar guilty tug at her heart.
But then she knew.
She went to a large box of old costumes, bits and pieces in a nook behind the stage, and drew out a long strip of vermilion silk she had seen there. A moment later, she held up the glittering red fabric for Mistinguett’s approval.
“What if we cuff the sleeves and collar with something more dramatic like this? The contrasting fabric beneath the lights should make it look quite remarkable.”
Mistinguett gave a pleased smile. “That’s brilliant!”
“Thank you.” Eva nodded.
“I had no idea you were a designer.”
“Nor did I.”
“Well, you certainly are now! Let’s do it!”
Full of the heady new sensation of success, Eva dared then to change the subject. But even as she did, she was terrified to ask the question for what she feared they would discover.
“So, why is Monsieur Picasso still with Fernande if she is so contrary to his Spanish roots?”
“A great mystery in Paris, I assure you. He’s had quite a reputation for some time with the ladies. And he took up a new studio in some derelict old building in Montmartre where he used to paint when he first began. They say it’s to get away from Fernande’s demands. Personally, I bet it’s a place to take women.”
“I thought she was your friend,” Eva said, thinking that with friends like her, Fernande Olivier most certainly did not need enemies.
“With her growing new sphere of influence here in the city, because of him, I would be foolish not to be her friend,” she replied. “But there is a desperation about Fernande that is off-putting, at least to me. I think she would fight to the death over anything that mattered to her. It’s as if she’s never quite certain if she is happy or if she’s on the verge of some great tragedy.”
Eva nodded in agreement, though she didn’t really see Fernande as anything but confident and beautiful.
“And do be careful of Picasso,” Mistinguett added as she ran the slip of red silk through her fingers. “He’s broken more than a few hearts around here—pretty girls who actually thought they might have a chance against Fernande.”
“I will bear that in mind,” Eva replied in a tone that said such a thing were beyond the realm of possibility.
She took the kimono back from Mistinguett then and began carefully taking apart the cuffs of the sleeves, wishing that she could take apart the love affair between Picasso and Fernande just as easily, if she were given half a chance.
* * *
Eva still longed to tell Sylvette the whole story.
She almost did a number of times as she dressed for the Circus Medrano Monday evening. She had chosen the same pale blue dress she had borrowed for the luncheon with Fernande because of how confident it made her feel, and tonight she certainly needed all of the confidence she could find.
The Moulin Rouge was closed on Mondays so this was the only opportunity to attend such an event. She knew she should be excited to have been invited, but she was also nervous about seeing Picasso again.
Louis held her arm as they approached the crowd gathered in front of the circus building. Neither one of them knew quite what to expect.
“I still don’t understand how you managed such an invitation,” he said excitedly, taking in all of the activity and the rollicking circus music spilling out from inside.
“Well, I owed you, certainly, after you took me to the exhibition. You told me that you would be pleased to meet such a celebrated young artist as Picasso, so I thought this might be fun. Everyone in Paris talks of him.”
“Of course I am pleased. I’m hoping he might be able to give me a few pointers about my own work since they say, for all of his success, he, too, had a rough go of it in the beginning.”
Eva cringed inwardly at the note of desperation in his voice. Louis had painted some beautiful watercolors but his work did not come from the place of passion Picasso’s did, and he certainly had nothing of the celebrity about him. Louis was a man who played at art. Picasso was a man who lived it.
Once Eva had given their names at the box office they were ushered inside by a young man dressed in a red-and-black harlequin costume. They passed a clown, a juggler and two girls in scanty dresses, each with huge bobbing feathers attached to their headdresses. Eva could tell from their expressions that only important guests were seated by a host.
Her heart began to race as they neared the front row. She spotted Picasso, Fernande and their group of friends prominently seated there. Suddenly she was not sure that she could go through with this. Her stomach squeezed into a tight knot and rocketed into her throat. Fernande stood, smiled broadly and waved to call them over.
“I’m so pleased you made it. I know you will love the show,” she said, embracing Eva as if they’d known each other for years, not days. “Pablo, this is Marcelle Humbert and her friend. Both of you, may I present, Pablo Picasso.”
She felt a brief spark of defiance and almost announced that they had already met, but her nerves overcame her and, beneath Picasso’s bold, dark gaze, she simply nodded.
“I’m Louis Markus,” Louis offered affably.
“And these are our dear friends, the very beautiful Germaine and her husband, Ramón Pichot, a wonderful artist himself,” she said of the attractive young couple with them. “And of course this is Guillaume Apollinaire.”
Apollinaire stood to greet them. He was exceedingly tall with a long heavy chin and sloping shoulders. Reading his poetry in Vincennes, Eva had always envisioned someone entirely more dashing and modest-sized. Still, he was a man with a likable aura and with the most wonderfully warm smile, she thought. He looked like a gentle giant.
“What an interesting beauty you possess,” Apollinaire remarked with a noticeable lisp, and she could hear the familiar Polish accent behind his words. He did not seem to remember having met her backstage at the Moulin Rouge.
“Listen to nothing he says. He is a dreadful flirt, and currently on the rebound. But of course they will reconcile—like everyone else in our little group. We are all bound together for eternity,” said the pretty young woman called Germaine as she extended her hand to Eva. Her hair was a similar shade to Fernande’s and she had the same striking green eyes. Eva thought they could have been sisters. “It’s a pleasure to meet any friend of Fernande.”
“Thank you,” Eva said. She glanced at Picasso then and saw that he was still staring at her. She was not certain what his strong gaze was telling her but she reveled in how awkward the situation must be for him, too. It was the only power she wielded over him and she wanted desperately to enjoy it. Was that not what a worldly woman did in a situation like this?
“Oh, it’s starting! Monsieur Markus, come sit beside me. Pablo loves to chatter on about all of the acts, and I, of course, have heard it all before,” Fernande instructed as if she were directing servants at a dinner party. “I’m told you’re a painter. Louis Markus, hmm. Did you ever consider changing your name? If you’re going to be a great artist in Paris, you really should be called something far more grand and memorable.”
Eva heard him chuckle since he had changed it once already. Louis Markus had been a vast improvement by Parisian standards. “Have you anything in mind?”
“Not yet, but I will,” Fernande announced.
Eva sank awkwardly into the only seat left open, the one beside Picasso. There was a railing right in front of them and the scent of sawdust and manure was disarmingly strong. A trumpet sounded, announcing the beginning of the show, and Picasso leaned in close to Eva.
“We really must stop meeting like this,” he said softly into her ear.
“I’d be happy to accommodate you if you would kindly stop cropping up everywhere.”
Fernande was happily chatting with Louis and pointing at the elephants, who were lumbering out into the center ring to great fanfare.
“That was unwarranted.”
“Was it?” Eva asked curtly, holding fast to her hauteur.
“There’s not a day this week I have not thought of you.”
“I’m sure Madame Picasso would not appreciate knowing that.”
“I have no wife.”
She cast a wary glance at Fernande. “She calls herself that so it is the same as if you did.”
“Perhaps that’s true,” he conceded with an uncomfortable shrug. Two great gray elephants in red-and-gold collars were paraded in front of them then by a man in a red coat and black top hat. He snapped a huge bullwhip. “I swear to you, when we met I had no intention of deceiving you.”
Eva could hear a slight hitch of regret layered beneath his whispered words.
“Once the milk is spilled it is spilled.”
There was a silence between them as the ringmaster bellowed in his loud, showy baritone. Picasso washed a hand over his face. He drew in a breath, exhaled, then looked out into the sawdust-covered center ring.
“I would not have expected such a harsh tone in your words.”
She stiffened, looking as well to the center ring and the two scantily clad female performers with feathered headdresses who had come out to ride the elephants. “They are not merely words, monsieur. The tone cannot be helped because they are the thoughts of my heart, meager and naive though they may well be to someone like you.”
“They touch me. You touch me. In a way I have not felt in a very long time.”
“And you insult me as we sit here in the presence of your wife.”
“Dios, she is not my wife!”
“Continually making that distinction is beneath you.”
“How have you any idea what is beneath me or what I am capable of?” he snapped at her.
Fernande was momentarily distracted by the rise in Picasso’s tone, and she glanced over at them. Eva felt herself flush. Her heart quickened. Perhaps she was not ready for this. She had never been so confused or humiliated. If she could take that one night back, ah, if... But she knew, even as the thought whispered through her mind, that a thousand times over she would still have given herself to Picasso. It truly had been the most exciting night of her life.
Neither of them spoke again until after the circus was over and they all walked together out onto the busy boulevard de Rochechouart with the rest of the crowd. The streetlamps were lit by then, and each one cast an amber cone of light through which they all passed. It was a warm evening and there were people strolling everywhere. Louis put a casual arm across Eva’s shoulder as they walked onto the rue des Martyrs and she felt herself seize up at the possession behind his touch. She forced herself not to shrink from him, however, since suddenly she wanted Picasso to feel jealous.
“You should all come to the apartment for a drink,” Fernande said blithely as she walked just ahead of them, linking her arm with Apollinaire. “It’s such a grand place we’ve got now, and I do love to entertain. Did you know Pablo rented me an aparmtent on the boulevard de Clichy? Everyone who is anyone lives there.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” said Picasso.
“Ah, the master has spoken!” Fernande snapped with a dramatic flourish. “Picasso does not think! Which in itself is a statement not so far from the truth.”
“Easy, Fernande,” Germaine warned.
Eva perked at the exchange between the two women, realizing how much better they knew Picasso.
“That’s all right, perhaps another time.”
“Oh, come now, Mademoiselle Humbert. There is nothing like the present! In Paris, one must seize opportunity. Pablo is a master at that. Tell them, Pablo. Tell them about being a master!”
“Stop it, Fernande,” he groaned in response.
“Con calma, mi amigo,” said Germaine’s husband. Eva knew even without understanding Spanish that Picasso’s friend was urging him not to make a scene, which the group had clearly been privy to more than once before.
“Spoilsport,” Fernande muttered beneath her breath.
“You mustn’t always bait him like that,” Germaine urged her friend, and suddenly Eva wished to be anywhere but here.
It all felt so exceedingly awkward. Louis tightened his fingers around Eva’s arm. Both of them could feel a battle brewing.
“Shall we not talk of how he baits me?” Fernande whispered back urgently.
“Bait you? I have given you everything you have ever asked for!” Picasso shouted, seemingly unleashed as he sped up to walk beside her.
“Let’s calm down, everyone, before this gets out of hand,” Ramón suggested, trying to ease the tension between them. “I think we are all in need of a drink.”
“Brilliant idea,” said Apollinaire.
“I’d prefer opium,” Fernande said in a kittenish mewl.
“You know perfectly well that is not going to happen again.”
“Don’t be too sure what is going to happen with me, Pablo,” Fernande said.
“I could say the same to you, mi corazón,” he shot back.
Instead of their apartment, they settled for la Closerie des Lilas on the boulevard du Montparnasse, a stylish café crowded most nights with young intellectuals. They collected at the long mahogany bar, where a group of men in white tie and tails, and women in elegant gowns, were enjoying a drink. They were likely going to or coming from the Opéra de Paris.
Picasso leaned in toward Eva. “I began the painting of you after you left,” he said in a low tone, breaking the din of animated conversation and the clatter of dishes around them.
“You are wasting your time,” Eva replied, refusing to look at him.
“Oh, I never do that,” he countered, biting back a smile as he glanced around. “Did you like the book?”
Fernande was openly flirting with Louis now, and she seemed to Eva to be rather drunk already. “Sylvette is using it as a doorstop.”
“Ah, Sylvette.”
“Have you seduced her, as well?” Eva asked baitingly just as Apollinaire approach them.
“I’m told you like my work,” he said affably as he barged between them as everyone was doing with one another in the crowd.
“I do.”
“Any poem in particular?”
“‘We knew very well that we were damned, / But hope of love along the way / Made both of us think / Of what the Gypsy did prophesy.’ That one has always spoken to me the most.”
Eva saw a spark of jealousy flare in Picasso’s eyes and she reveled in it.
“You memorized it?”
“Several of them, actually. ‘I have picked this sprig of heather. / Autumn has ended, you do remember. / Never on this earth shall we meet again. / Scent of time, sprig of heather / Remember always, I wait for you forever.’”
“I’m duly impressed, mademoiselle.”
“Apo, go see if our table is ready yet,” Picasso grumbled with an authoritative air. He seemed to be completely ignoring Fernande, and what was happening between her and Louis, half a bar’s length away.
“I must see you again. You must allow me to paint you.”
“Sit for you, like last time? Oh, I think not.”
“Was it really so bad between us, Mademoiselle Gouel?” Picasso pressed as he leaned in close enough that she could feel the warm, primal attraction between them, and his breath near her throat.
Eva drew up her wineglass and took a sip. When she realized her hand was shaking, she slowly set the glass back down on the bar, hoping he had not seen it.
“I certainly didn’t know you were living with someone,” she said.
“And I didn’t know you were such an innocent to the ways of the world. So we each have had the other at a disadvantage.”
She never expected him to be so clever, or so disarming—particularly now in a crowd of people in which his lover was mere steps away. Eva might be out of her league with him but she was just angry enough not to submit to his artful ploys again.
“Forgive me, I don’t mean to toy with you,” Picasso said as he trapped her fingers in his own beneath the bar. “Only say you’ll allow me to see you again.”
“And Madame Picasso?”
“Fernande has a new lover, as it turns out, a strapping young German boy. My friends think I don’t know. They are trying to protect me so that I will keep painting. Anything to keep the peace, and keep the money rolling in. But I know.”
“It is all just too dangerous for me,” Eva shook her head. “I really cannot get caught up into this.”
“Alas, it seems to me, mi belleza, that you already are.”
When their table was finally ready, Apollinaire insisted that Eva sit beside him so that they might speak further of poetry and the poets she liked. Then, in turn, he would reveal how he had come to write some of his own intentionally cryptic, often gritty, verses. It was such a joy, he said, to speak to anyone who respected the art. Picasso sat across from her at the table between Germaine and Ramón. Throughout dinner, in spite of their distance, Picasso’s gaze never strayed far from Eva. She could feel it even as Apollinaire chattered on about poetry and drugs.
“Do you not ever write about love?” she asked as they were served a course of terrine.
“I’ve never been in love. Only lust.” He sighed. “And I make a point only to write what I know.”
“Seems prudent. I don’t think I have been, either.” Eva chuckled, knowing she hadn’t.
“So Fernande tells me you, too, are from Poland, Mademoiselle Humbert?”
“My parents met there. My father is French, my mother Polish. We lived there only when I was a small child, until my father brought us all back to live in France.”
He really was surprisingly easy to talk with for someone whose work she had so long admired. “My real name is Eva Gouel, but I’m putting it aside for now to see what else is out there for a Parisian girl who goes by the name Marcelle Humbert.”
“Ah, yes. That is much more Parisian. Not clearly quite so authentic, though, for your lovely Polish smile. I’m really the very unpoetic Wilhelm Kostrowicki, but, as a fellow Pole, I will trust you not to spread that around.” He chuckled.
“Fernande told me she, too, has called herself many different things here in the city.”
“Including Madame Picasso.”
“You don’t approve of her calling herself that?” Eva asked.
“I wouldn’t dare say so if I didn’t. Fernande Olivier is a force with which to be reckoned. Certainly not one to be crossed.”
And into the mix suddenly came Fernande’s lovely voice from across the table. She was telling Louis that she had come up with a name for him and that after tonight he must be known in Paris as Marcoussis. That, she decreed, was a wonderfully artistic name that was sure to bring him luck.
“I will consider myself warned,” Eva said to Apollinaire.
“But you are her new friend, so there is nothing in the world to worry about,” he said with a throaty chuckle, and he lifted up his knife and fork. “As long as she likes you.”
Chapter 7 (#)
“Why, Pablo Diego Ruiz y Picasso, what the devil has gotten into you? I’ll be damned if you aren’t stone drunk!” Max Jacob chuckled as he stepped back from the open door of his brick apartment building on the boulevard Barbès.
“Not drunk enough,” Picasso grunted as motorcars and carriages moved past in the street behind him. His eyes were bloodshot and unfocused. “Where’s your wine?”
“Haven’t got any, I’m afraid, ol’ chum. Sound familiar?” Max quipped tauntingly. He never missed a chance with his old friend to give as good as he got. He had given Picasso the first roof over his head here in Paris, lent him a few centimes when he needed it and bought him food. Max felt that gave him license that few others had.
“Where’s your ether, then? I know you’ve got that,” Picasso slurred.
“Now what kind of a friend would I be if I told you?” Max put a hand on his arm as Picasso lunged for the dresser drawers. “I’ve gone cold turkey this time, amigo. I woke up two days ago in front of my house in a pool of my own swill, with a stray cat licking my face. Nothing quite so poetic to set you right as that. It put me off the stuff for good. I swear it.”
Max spoke it as a musing but he had battled a drug problem for years. When Picasso and Fernande had given up smoking opium two years ago, Max had gone on with a vengeance, adding ether to his ever-growing list of addictions.
“I need to speak about Fernande and, of all our friends, you’re the least biased in her favor so I know you will be honest.”
“You mean, I’m the one who is the least captivated by her seductive charms.” Max chuckled as he closed the door.
“Sí, if you like.”
“That may have more to do with my sexual preferences than my powers of discernment, mon ami. She’s just never held sexual sway over me. But like everyone else, I do acknowledge her undeniable beauty.”
“I’m not sure she holds that sway over me any longer, either.”
Max stepped back as if he’d been struck. Then he sank into the shabby wingback chair beside his coal fireplace. “Merde. That’s something I truly never thought I’d hear you say.”
“Me, either.”
Picasso washed a hand wearily over his face, and a deep mournful groan escaped from behind it. He was confused, and so tired. Certainly he was frustrated. They were all things he loathed being for how pathetic it made him feel. Power was the only true aphrodisiac worth its while to him.
“Is Fanny Tellier modeling for you again?” Max asked suspiciously as they sat together in the quaint drawing room bountiful with decorative ferns. Heavy fringed draperies hung from the windows and books lined the walls.
“It’s not her. It’s no one,” Picasso lied. To speak of Eva seemed a betrayal of a gentle young woman, albeit one with an alluring spark of fire.
“No, it’s not her at all. It’s me. The predictability of life right now, the way we’ve all been so wild, and will go on being wild.” He sighed. “I don’t know. And then there’s the work. No one but Kahnweiler seems to understand my new paintings. Everyone wants a bite out of my growing success, but no one really cares for the taste of what lies beneath.”
“You’re twenty-nine years old, mon ami, hardly ready for such somber reflection and self-pity.”
“Well, lately I feel quite old and just as frustrated by this path, as if I were ready for all of that.”
“Good Lord, Pablo, what the devil has brought this on? Fernande has always been your muse, your great love.”
“That’s just it!” He held his palms out in a pleading gesture. His face quickly reddened with frustration. “What if she isn’t my muse? What if it’s someone else who is meant to inspire and support me? Will I be trapped in this strangling world unless I break free to claim her? Dios mío, ayudame, where is that ether?”
Max exhaled and shook his head. “It’s the German, isn’t it? Apo told her to be careful but she never listens.... I don’t know which one of you is worse. Maybe the two of you need to get away. It’s nearly summer. Why not leave Paris for a while. Go down to the South, gain some perspective again, hmm? Take your animals. You know how your little menagerie cheers you. Paint, make love. The boy will wither away.”
But would his interest in Eva wither? Would he outrun that curiosity for something different that he could not chase away? Was such a thing possible now that he had become fascinated by her?
The more he thought of Eva, the more he needed to be with her again.
“Think this through carefully, Pablo. Fernande is one of us. The group won’t easily accept another woman after all these years, I warn you. Come to think of it, nor shall I. Fernande might be a bit of a nuisance right now, but she’s our nuisance, mon ami, remember that.”
Chapter 8 (#)
“The bright red cuffs are just what the costume needed so the audience can follow my movements without words, which is how I plan to captivate them. Marcelle, I owe you everything,” Mistinguett pronounced as she pulled Eva into a dramatic embrace before the show.
“Whoever thought our little sprite here could become a costume designer at the Moulin Rouge,” Louise Balthy chimed as she rounded the door toward them.
“I didn’t actually design it,” Eva demurred, blushing at the praise that she wasn’t accustomed to, and which she did not entirely trust. “I just enhanced it a little.”
“Modesty won’t get you very far in this city,” said the chubby comedienne. “We all must use what we’ve got. For heavens sake, look at me!”
“She’s absolutely right, you know. You have certainly proven yourself to all of us,” Mistinguett decreed.
“And you saved me with my torn stockings and drawers more than a few times these past weeks, so my loyalty knows no bounds,” Louise concurred faithfully.
“I’m glad.” Eva smiled. “But the creation of one costume does not a designer make. It’s a bit premature to give me a lofty title like that. Especially without Madame Léautaud’s approval.”
“True. But you have caused everyone here to stand up and take notice. Some new title is only a matter of time,” predicted Louise.
“So then, what time shall I call for you Saturday evening for Gertrude Stein’s salon?” Mistinguett asked. “You are still going to accompany me, aren’t you?”
Deep inside the pocket of her skirt, Eva touched the little sachet of pipe tobacco she carried with her always now, in this new place, feeling comforted by it when so many things in her life were so swiftly changing.
She knew it would be suspicious if she did not go now that she had been formally invited. She could not risk offending Mistinguett, either, so she was relieved that Louis had been invited, as well, for fear of running into Picasso there.
The whole thing would be over soon enough. That, at least, was what she was telling herself as the show began, though she couldn’t help but steal a glimpse from behind the stage curtain at the table where she had seen Picasso and his friends. Eva hated the disappointment she felt not finding him in his usual spot. There, in his place instead, was a stout, silver-haired woman wearing a prominent hat ornamented with an ostrich feather, her fan wide open and fluttering. Beside her was a man with a ginger-colored goatee who looked entirely bored.
Just as well, Eva thought with a sigh of resignation. Pursuing Picasso was like playing with fire.
She watched the geisha number from backstage, and then Louise’s Spanish dance after that. It was a more serious turn for the comedienne as she twirled her bright fringed shawl and tipped her black bolero at the crowd to a round of thunderous applause. Surprisingly enough, there were no mishaps tonight for Eva to tend to. It was something of a relief, Eva thought as she absently fingered the little pouch inside of her pocket. Tomorrow was Saturday. It had crept up swiftly and she was not at all certain she was ready for it. She still had no idea what to wear.
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